The Beginning of the Adventure...

June 20—the day is starred and double-starred on my calendar. (“Star and double-star” is one of my special calendar code marks of enthusiasm.) I’ve been eagerly looking forward to it for weeks.

Why June 20? The days before it will be days of memories and exhilaration, red-letter days to be sure. The sixteenth through the nineteenth, twelve girls and I will be in Dallas together for the final stage of Advanced EXCEL—a journey begun in February. Final speeches, testimonies, rehearsals, private jokes, group pictures, black suits and business professional attire, a ceremony and reception, and more. They will be days of completion, of joy together in God’s faithfulness, and celebration of a job well done.

The days before June 20, I will be spending time with dear friends. I will be concluding five months of full-time study. I will enjoy deep fellowship, hilarious mealtimes, and matchless cheesecake. Those days will be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

But June 20 is the day I have starred: the day after all that is over. I will be home. No friends, no events. Why the stars and double-stars?

I love adventure. And the beginning of an adventure is the best part. The start of a road trip, the arrival at an airport, the first lesson of a new course, the first meeting of a new group—the rush of anticipation, the launch of something new. I even love the butterflies of uncertainty that occasionally flutter in the stomach. What makes an end sweet is the promise of the beginning of something new.

June 20 is the first day of a new adventure—summer. The nineteenth is an end; the twentieth is a beginning. The nineteenth will be filled with satisfaction and completion, and I will walk to the car to drive home in that solemn, quiet calm that always accompanies the end of a good thing. An end without a beginning, however, only results in aimlessness; an end with a beginning brings purpose, energy, and high exhilaration. My drive home will be the transition point.

As I drive, my thoughts will turn from “those things which are behind” and “ reach forth unto those things that are before.” Upon arriving home, I will vigorously unpack as much as I can and roll into bed. Memories of the afternoon will blend with anticipation of the morning.

When I wake up, appropriately late, the morning of June 20, I will feel as if I have been home for days. In the thrill of beginning, I will forget there was ever such a thing as Advanced EXCEL. After a breakfast on the porch, I will head to my room and spend the rest of the day doing what I have longed to do for almost a year: organize my closet.

That will be only the beginning of the adventure. In the following weeks, I will steadily progress through my room: after the closet, the dresser; after the dresser, the desk; after the desk, the bookshelves; after the bookshelves, the bathroom. I will practice music all the arrears of hours I have racked up in the past months. I will plan my studio’s next year. I will finish applying for college. I will lead a group of girls in a study of God’s calling on their lives and all its implications. I will immerse myself in French again, and spend time growing in godliness with lifelong friends. I will sew those skirts I have needed for the last year, and possibly the dress I have wanted for the past two. I will reorganize the family libraries—the books and the music. I will spend a week in the New Mexico Rockies hiking and relaxing with my family, with nothing to do but enjoy each other. And maybe I will even read those fifteen books I put down on my New Year’s Resolutions.

I will be no less busy then than I am now, but I will be busy in a different way. I do not desire to have nothing to do. I desire to do those things I have put off for so long. And June 20 is the beginning of the fulfillment of that desire.

Each adventure in my life adds richness to the next. I will bring the experience of Advanced EXCEL with me into the beginning of the rest of my life. I will chat with my dear classmates on g-talk, and catch up with them on the phone. We will always be in touch, I hope. Just because I go on to the new does not mean I forget the old. But just because I cherish the old does not mean I forget the new.

June 19 closes a chapter. June 20 opens another. I savor the close of this chapter, but I rejoice at the sight of the next. “Sometimes I get giddy!”, said William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace; at the sight of my starred and double-starred calendar, so do I.

If

If, by Rudyard Kipling, is one of my favorite poems ever. It sets forth the difficulties that accompany success, but inspires one to take them on nonetheless. Kipling gives the hard facts but makes you want to do it anyway. Now there's motivational writing! And motivational living, for that matter. Think what an impact a life that really looked like this would make. The people who saw it would never, could never, be the same. Such a life would not only be inspired, it would be itself an inspiration. Can we, or rather will we, take the challenge?




If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:


If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

AE Assignment 6 Pictures

Advanced EXCEL assigns that I take pictures of various concepts and load them on my blog, so here they are:

1. Stapler: from the inside...

2. Reflections: twin soaps

3. Leap: anticipation

4. Fears: uselessness...

5. Coffee: mug, journal, and pen--a perfect afternoon

6. Time: "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?...If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come." ~ Job 17:7-10, 14

7. Squirrel: Treed!

8. White Trash: I'm still puzzling over this topic, but they asked for it...this is my trash can, by the way.

9. Date: Double Date, that is...

10. Police: cops and robbers...

11. Self-portrait: with the help of my dresser mirror

12. Making a Statement: Guess the composer...

Women in Leadership

One of my recent assignments was an essay stating my convictions on "women in leadership." This is an interesting subject that I think is not often enough addressed. The feminist trend of offensive, masculine women leaders can bring up a reaction against anything that appears like strength and capability. The key is to find God's balance between the two. I tried to address this in my essay, and thought I would post it here:



I believe in women who are leaders. I believe in women who are fearless and strong, ready for a challenge. I believe that the Kingdom of God will be only as strong as its citizens, and that women are citizens of that Kingdom.


The children of God are called to be leaders, and God makes no stipulation that women are not included. Men and women alike are called to be influencers, to seek to glorify God in their lives and in their society. Each Christian is meant to be a leader. They may lead obviously, or lead quietly, or lead unconsciously, but they all are intended to be leaders.


To reject that design and resign from that leadership is to retreat from the field, to lessen the ranks of the Kingdom’s defenders. Worse, it is to lead negatively. Rejection of design always leads only to perversion. In retreating from the field, a Christian woman does not retreat alone. She takes others with her, and disheartens the ones who remain. There is no true escape from leadership, for we are created leaders.


People often discuss whether women should be in authority. I believe that women may be in positions of authority. It is not sinful for a woman to organize an event, or delegate responsibilities.


That being said, there are some positions of authority that women should not fill. Spiritual authority is delegated to men. So is civil. Any time in the Bible that a woman takes these roles, it is a curse to her people. This does not mean that a woman should not lead other women spiritually—the Bible specifically commands that—but leading and mentoring younger women, and being responsible for and in authority over a body of believers, are two different things.


I believe also that women should be in authority under authority. Scripture clearly states that “the head of the woman is the man” (1 Cor 11:3). God’s design is for women to be under the authority of men, usually their husbands or fathers. If a position requires a woman to be out from under such authority, or to go against it, or to usurp it, it is not an acceptable position for her.


This, by the way, is not some sort of irrational, masochistic stipulation. The same reasoning that brings that belief (a rebellious dislike of authority) concludes that God’s requirement that we be under His authority is irrational and chauvinistic. If God has made a person a woman, it is because she will be better fitted for her fore-ordained destiny as a woman than as a man. Being under that authority will further his plans for her, not hinder them.


The Kingdom of God needs its women to be leaders now as much as or more than it ever has in the past. It needs women of character and courage, women who stand firm at the darkest hour, women who do not lead for themselves because they despise to be led but who lead for their King because they follow Him unwavering. These are the women the Kingdom waits for; these are the women we are called to be.

My Kate

I found this a couple of years ago flipping through a book of poetry. It's a little-known poem by the well-known poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning (author of Sonnets from the Portuguese). I have to wonder if it was written about an actual friend of hers.

This poem caught my attention because it is a tribute to a woman that does not include romantic love--rather unusual in poetry. In fact, romance does not even appear to have entered her life. In it we see the portrait, drawn by a friend, of a young woman now dead, and find glimpses of the influence she had on others.

This poem made me think about the influence I am having. Often influence is so quiet no one, even the influenced, notices it.

What kind of influence are you having? You may not have any idea of your power; I doubt Kate often thought about hers. What will people say about you when you die? Will even people who hardly thought about you sit up and wonder what is different, what's missing?


My Kate

She was not as pretty as women I know,
And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow
Drop to shade, melt to nought in the long-trodden ways,
While she’s still remembered on warm and cold days—
My Kate.

Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace;
You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face;
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth,
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth—
My Kate.

Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke,
You looked at her silence and fancied she spoke;
When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone,
Though the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone—
My Kate.

I doubt if she said to you much that could act
As a thought or suggestion; she did not attract
In the sense of the brilliant or wise; I infer
’Twas her thinking of others made you think of her—
My Kate.

She never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown—
My Kate.

None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall;
They knelt more to God than they used—that was all;
If you praised her as charming, some asked what you meant,
But the charm of her presence was felt when she went—
My Kate.

The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
She took as she found them, and did them all good;
It always was so with her—see what you have!
She has made the grass greener even here with her grave—
My Kate.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

John Milton, a devoted Christian and a poetic genius, became blind at the age of forty-three. He chronicles his struggle with the prospect of what seemed limited usefulness, and reminds us of what God really desires from us.

When he was fifty, he began a new work...Paradise Lost.

Sonnet on His Blindness, by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide:
“Doth God exact day labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

On the Way to the Funeral of a Dear Friend

Death—
the final triumph,
the glad bursting into radiant glory,
the beginning of the great endlessness

for which the life we have here—
or so we call it—is only a dim reflection,
an off-stage rehearsal,
without lights, costumes, or set,

the afternoon before the Eternal Play begins,
never to leave off.

I mean not that the life we have here is not beautiful—
far from it!—
but that the life we know is only the prologue

to the things that shall come after.

No one attends a play for the prologue,
or reads a book for the introduction.
They go and read for what follows.

Why should we shrink from death?
Life is but the foreword, incomplete,
senseless,
without it.
If the prologue is so glorious,
why would we wish to flee the tale of which the prologue speaks?
The prologue exists for the play:
the play is not some freakish, tragic accident that by chance succeeds it,
the play is the event.

And the nervousness we feel between the prologue and the play,
when the lights are out and the curtains drawn,
is but the nervousness of the height of anticipation,
the last moment of uncertainty before

the longed-for joy shines forth fulfilled.