by abigailpless

PREFACE

In the performing arts’ and sports’ worlds, there is an eloquent term used about a week or two before “Opening Night,” or “Game One,” or “Ready-or-Not-Here-We-Come,” to describe the hectic, frenzied last rehearsals, run-throughs or practices: Hell Week.

I told you it was eloquent.

I am in the midst of my Hell Week.
~ ~ ~

As always, the first class session of a new semester with a new schedule, each professor jogs through the Course Syllabus. I flip through each page of my planner, jotting down information and dates for papers, quizzes and exams, and midterms and finals like a responsible student. As soon as the last professor says the last, “Turn into Blackboard by 5 p.m. on…,” I close that planner and toss it into my backpack (where it undoubtedly rests until the end of the semester). For about two months, I dominate like Caesar, learning and understanding new things to the point of expertise, and then the gladiator games hit and I cower like a child: all the papers, exams, and midterms collide into the two weeks before Thanksgiving break.

I am almost certain that last week, my professors sat in a conference room with coffee and pumpkin pie and collaborated on the extended due dates for my classes’ assignments: research papers, class performances, multiple choir performances, major exams, and tests on top of everyday work and homework. Naturally, when requirements are at hand and the week is at its peak of busyness, my subconscious rebels and entices me with new recipes for baking, trips to LA to attend the symphony, disorderly apartments which result in clean sheets, and/or presidential elections. Let’s be honest – nothing gets done when spare ingredients need to baked, or when America elects a new (or renewed) president. Several times a day this week, I have calculated an approximate number of hours I should dedicate to each task in need of completion, how many hours I will realistically dedicate, and what I could possibly do to distract myself from said hours of work.

Now, to resist my relentless urge of visiting Barnes and Noble for a new book, here’s to Hell Week.
Apple Crisp, anyone?

As the mornings turn brisk, and the sun’s heat fades to just skin-warming, I cannot help but leaf through my childhood memories of autumn – shopping with Mom for the perfect winter coat, opening the front door after school to a waft of what the slow cooker had been cooking all day, rifling through piles of leaves with my best friend (Bailey, my next door neighbors’ black Labrador Retriever), and birthday celebrations complete with meatballs, elaborately wrapped gifts, crazy cousins running amok and pumpkin pie.

However, among my plethora of fond fall memories, Halloween happens to land in my “favorite” category.

From Baby Bop to Sacagawea (I liked history, okay?) to Queen Amidala, I took pride in my costumes. If an idea entered my mind, I was set – there was no way I was going to dress up as anything other than that. Occasionally, that determination translated into my mom and sister-in-law sewing outfits and additions to something we bought or had handy. Weeks before Halloween night, my costume would lay out for me to admire as I walked past it. Waking up on Halloween morning to a sweet goody and note on my nightstand from my parents always started the day perfectly. Then… (insert dramatic pause here) … my eyes would veer to my costume, waiting patiently for me put it on for the annual school costume parade. I would practically fall out of bed in excitement. After breakfast, mom would help me with whatever hairstyle and makeup my costume required. Since my mother was a florist, smartly tied bows appeared in my hair, on my wrist, around my waist and on anything else she could tie a ribbon around, regardless of if my costume required them or not. Then the crowning moment: the donning of the outfit. With the final approval from Mom and Dad that every piece of clothing and appropriate accessory was in tact, we would leave for school.

After about half an hour of strutting my stuff on the playground, inspecting my friends’ costumes and about five hours of Halloween-themed school lessons, I would head home to a nap, because Momma definitely did not want to take a cranky Sacagawea out for more candy. My aunts and cousins would meet us at Headquarters (my aunt’s prime location for supreme candy-hunting), flaunt our carefully chosen outfits and go on our merry way of Trick-or-Treating. With stomachs aching from laughter and pounds of candy in our arms, our family would make our way back to our Aunt’s house to appraise the outcome and do business (“I’ll trade you a Reese’s for a pack of Starbursts!”).

I am almost positive that as a child, I consumed more sugar, enjoyed naptime, ate all my vegetables and could not wait to get out of bed to get dressed in the morning on Oct. 31 more than any other day of the year.

Is it socially unacceptable for a 20-year-old to go Trick-or-Treating? Because I’m pretty sure I could squeeze into this costume again:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1: 2-4

Four years ago this week, I lost my mother to cancer. I was a high school junior, with a “man’s man” of a father and two siblings nine and 19 years older than me. That experience immediately launched me from adolescence to young womanhood. How is that possible—forcefully adopting adulthood the day after your (bitter) Sweet Sixteenth birthday? On my own: impossible. With help: manageable.

I can’t put into words who my mother was. I attempted once to type out a description of her with extremely accurate words to do justice to her character, but no words seemed to go far enough. Because of either my lack of vocabulary, or the possibility that my mom’s character is nearly indescribable, I can safely say that there wasn’t another woman on earth like her. She was the glue to my family, and oddly enough, when glue is taken away from the object it is holding together, the object is no longer one, but many individual pieces.

Our family unit was broken.

As each of my family members grieved their own loss of her, the foundation of our own characters was shaken. Father lost his 43-year relationship with his sweetheart and half of himself; Brother lost his understanding of home and his children’s grandmother; Sister lost her confidante and mentor; I lost my life teacher and strongest encourager. We remained broken-hearted for ourselves, but we learned joy through the realization of our eternity with Christ.

God provides. I survey the events of the last four years almost every night as my head sinks into my pillow and discover the fingerprints of His hands in every situation. With each year, He further molds my heart into understanding grace and provision using people in my life as a teaching medium.

As the presence of my mother’s life and spirit dissipated from mine, God began to gently escort women after His own heart into my life. Godly women—women who had experienced hurt for themselves and turned to the Lord for strength—slowly began to appear to offer motherly advice, support, encouragement, and compassionate admonition to me. As a stubborn girl, with headstrong tendencies and feminine individualism, I was reluctant to accept any sort of help from anyone. I did not enjoy relying on another person to aid me when I felt perfectly capable of being self-reliant.

Oh, how I was wrong. I continually proved to be in need of advisement and grace. In a stern conversation from one of these women, she said to me that the Bible orders us to help one another when we are in need. We are the body of Christ—we are to look after each other and offer what we have to someone who needs it, whether they know it or not and we are to accept that help. After that memorable conversation, my hardened heart towards allowing people to help me began to slowly soften. Even after four years of God continually teaching me this important idea, I am still frequently hesitant to accept assistance from anyone, but remembering the fact that the body of Christ is a unit, a family, it steadily becomes more acceptable in my mind. In the moment, I am humbled. Looking back over the situation, I am thankful—thankful that God was so invested in me to use His people to teach me how the body of Christ operates.

Learning how to accept aid from caring women is one of the most important concepts I have learned through my mother’s death, proving the provision of the Lord through the trials of human life. I recently heard a sermon from an unfamiliar pastor who said that as God provides trials to draw you nearer to Him, He will also provide every sort of means to make it through. That is the story of my life—as God provides trials, he also provides a way through so that we are closer to Him, and able to communicate His grace through our experiences.

“When I’m worried, and I can’t sleep,
I count my blessings instead of sheep,
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.”
–Irving Berlin, White Christmas

Lights.     Camera.     Plaid.

Plaid?

Yes. Plaid. Of the “forever” kind. Plaid has had its ups and downs in the fashion world, but here on campus, it has left an impression on all of those who have partaken in the musical phenomenon in the Wallace Theater. I’m talking about Forever Plaid, the fall musical that CBU’s drama department has masterfully produced this month: a 60s, plaid-clad group of boyband-singer-wannabes-almost-turned-superstars who unfortunately were killed in a van crash in the midst of their big break, and have been given one last chance to woo an earthly audience with their classic barbershop-style harmonies and early rock and roll croons. The four characters are a crack-up, and the dialogue between them was written just perfectly – a perfect blend of sarcasm with honesty, light-heartedness with depth, teasing with encouragement.

I was literally that woman in the theater whose laugh dominated over the entire audience. I think my boyfriend, Chris, was slightly embarrassed to have to sit next to me. Not only was the show just ridiculously hilarious, but also the cast was made of men that I am actually friends with. As I sat watching Jordan Smith, Ryan Yoder, Connor Smith, and Ethan Park act out the larger-than-life personalities on stage, I couldn’t help but think about whom the guys really were. Each having participated in several musicals and shows, their personalities are already developed into actors’ personalities, and each will make you laugh at any given moment just by being who they are. Then to see them fit themselves into the given characters had my sides in stitches and my cheeks sore from laughter.

As a music major, my ears are naturally drawn to music. For those who appreciate music, Forever Plaid will not disappoint. The nature of barber-shop quartet singing is tight harmonies, blended tone, and connection between the singers. With a floor-throbbing bass (Jordan), a stratosphere-singing tenor (Ryan), and two individually song-selling lead voices (Ethan and Connor), the quartet blew my expectations out of the water. I knew they would sound phenomenal, considering I have sung in choir with these four guys for two years, but I watched in awe through each of the songs. The quality of the singing was top-notch, and the overall “feel” of the music time-travelled you back to the era of 60s bee-bop rock and roll.

This production just goes to show what kind of quality teaching we have at CBU. Each of the cast members is a testament of the music and drama teaching of our professors here, doing complete justice to each department.

I want to see the show seven more times. Bummer that there aren’t seven opportunities! Head over to the Wallace Theater to purchase tickets for this weekend’s performances. If you hear some crazy lady laughing in the audience, don’t worry: it’s just me!

Introverted. Self-Reliant. Opinionated. Determined. Strong-willed. Creative.

With that said, naturally, I am a voracious reader. Diving into a world created by another imaginative writer brings joy to my heart. I love knowing that God blessed the author with a gift for words and and the ability to worship the ultimate Creator through their abilities.

Fiction and philosophical works generally pique my interest before any others. However, recently, I have had an appetite for biblical fiction. From what I have seen, authors take an idea, incident or character and expand it by embellishing the original Biblical story. Out of the handful of biblical fiction I have read so far, “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers is at the top of my list.

I have to be honest though – as I searched through Barnes and Noble for a worthy piece of work, I initially plucked “Redeeming Love” out of the heaping mass of pages based on its eye-catching cover. Yes, I did. I went against the age-old adage of “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

All I have to say is that I got lucky this time!

I had heard that “Redeeming Love” was a spin-off of  Hosea from the Old Testament. So before I cracked the cover of my beautifully designed book, I decided to do a short study on the storyline of the biblical book.

Hosea, the prophet, was ordered by God to marry a prostitute — a woman who would sell her body for earthly things out of selfishness and disobedience. He was to love her unconditionally, redeeming her through his righteousness. The story is a parable of how God (Hosea) unconditionally loved Israel (Gomer, prostitute), and how Israel consistently and deliberately disobeyed God. Finally, the story illustrates God’s attempts to redeem Israel through his steadfast love and discipline. What a beautiful picture already. While painted figuratively, it forms an image of God’s redeeming love in our brains.

The entire time I flipped the pages of Rivers’ book (all of about 27 hours), a box of tissues lay in my lap. Tears were shed and my nose was blown. Her ability to weave a story, which had a preexisting plot, in a way that I could relate to without highfalutin jargon was captivating. I could not put it down. The idea of taking historical events and characters to fill out a plotline with detail wasn’t a new concept to me, but I definitely thought openly embellishing Biblical characters was risky business. However, I truly did not feel any sort of awkward tension between the fictional book and the biblical account; if anything, I thought Rivers’ adaptation assisted in my understanding of the book of Hosea. I remember thinking after finishing the book, “Now, why isn’t there a fictional book for every biblical story? I would understand the Bible with such a new clarity!”

That is what makes “Redeeming Love” a gem of a story, though – the fact that biblical fiction isn’t as easy to find as mainstream fiction .Francine Rivers is just brilliant. Please go buy the book. Now.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/redeeming-love-francine-rivers/1100387990?ean=9781590525135

Now my introverted, self-reliant, opinionated, determined, strong-willed and creative self is on the hunt for a new biblical fiction.

Where can I place an order for a great book, mug of richly aromatic coffee and foggy, frigid outdoor conditions? Put me down for approximately 150 days worth.

As a stereotypical, broke college student, I will be the first to tell you that when a card from a family member with a small donation to my Starbucks addiction appears in my mailbox, my eyes almost tear up. Then there is that moment when I randomly find a five-dollar bill in a purse that hasn’t been used in a while. Of course, I immediately spend it, because when you’re used to very little (as most college students would agree), those thin paper bills are like a brick of gold in your wallet.

Growing up, many conversations with my father started with, “$5 can’t get you anywhere nowadays. Boy, I remember when $5 could…”

But if we brain storm about it, $5 could be spent in an uncountable amount of ways as a college student—my personal favorite being for a Starbucks’ drink (Tummy, meet Pumpkin Spice, Pumpkin Spice – Tummy), a meal at In-n-Out or a 35-bottle flat of Kirkland Water from Costco.

Here are a few other ways your average CBU student could use a crisp five-dollar bill:

For the days that you:

– Don’t want to leave your air-conditioned apartment, $5 could make you a meal for your entire apartment consisting of homemade omelets, a tangy Caesar salad or a hearty soup.

– Expect a package in the mail, $5 can get you a little over a gallon of gas to drive yourself to the post (I am definitely not walking when it’s 105 degrees outside, let’s be real).

– Run out of tissue of the bathroom variety, CVS carries plenty of brands for around $5.

– Forget to do your homework, some desperate freshman could really use that $5 … Kidding. Don’t freak out, moms.

– Have an enormous essay due for that class you didn’t want complete in the first place, printer paper is easily accessed for $5 from Target or Walmart.

– Smell from recycling the same clothes for two weeks, CBU’s laundry cards cost exactly $5. Three of those dollars go toward a full load of laundry.

– Just really need a DVD from Redbox or a Cold Stone treat. No explanation necessary.

What I’m really getting at is this: Parents – send your kid a Lincoln every now and again! If not for a sweet Starbucks drink now and again, then for a load of laundry… You really don’t want your child to be the smelly kid in class!

I was that child on the softball field blowing bubbles with my watermelon-flavored bubblegum the size of my face. Given the fact that my mother would only allow me to consume the sugary goodness when I had an entire field at my feet’s mercy, I would chew and blow, chew and blow until the flavor was gone (or at least until I could unwrap a new, flavorful hunk of gum to start in on). That watermelon gum was my life for seven innings because I knew at the end of the game, Mom would replace that sugar with some endless heap of green beans. Occasionally, the kid who had a history of striking out would pull a ball right to me. In my panic and frenzy, I would blow too hard and my masterpiece would splatter all over my face. What a heartbreak to a kid who only knew bubblegum once a week. In that moment, your whole life is smeared across your dirty face (more often than not, the gum would end up right back in my mouth — God made dirt; dirt don’t hurt.)

As a college student, my watermelon-flavored “bubbles” are still getting popped — this time by the dozens of new concepts and ideas lobbed at me each day at California Baptist University.

Literally, I cannot count how many times these past couple weeks of the new school year that I’ve sat in whatever class, in whatever seat, thinking, “Seriously? I now have bubblegum smeared across my face from what you just said.”

That precious bubble – my ideas, experiences, and theories – had just shattered by the impact of what Dr. Whatshisname just taught. However, I feel like that is the whole point of higher education. You have roughly 18-20 years of life experiences that develop into ideas and beliefs which you base your life around, and then wham a guy with a myriad of doctorate degrees uncovers the whole truth of an idea you had never heard or experienced before. You’re left completely and utterly confused.

Because I am stubborn and I like to think I’m right (although, my boyfriend and best friend suggest otherwise), I usually sit with my arms crossed and brow furrowed, deep in thought or disagreement. I often leave class just a little more confused than when I entered it.

But how amazing can those moments of complete frustration turn out to be? True intelligence comes at those confusing moments when that bubble bursts and all of our ideas and beliefs are turned on their head by another opinion or option. As long as I am in school, where I can exercise my ideas and thoughts, I will continue to work my skill of bubble-blowing because goodness knows that those bubbles need to be popped to reveal truth and wisdom.

We all know that watermelon bubblegum tastes tenfold better than green beans.

Unless there’s bacon involved. That’s a completely different story.

Teachers and professors throughout my education have claimed that if you understand the writer, you will understand the writing and have an actual appreciation for it. Those who really know me can verify how true the following statements are in describing me:

Harry Potter Enthusiast.

Cat Whisperer.

Musician.

If I said that I watched Harry Potter every day, it could quite possibly be an understatement. It’s also possible that I can name any song from the movies and what scene it’s from. It might also be true that I’ve read the books more times than I can count on my hands (and/or toes). My friends call it an obsession, but Harry Potter’s world fascinates me. I can’t help it if I enjoy the uniforms Gryffindor wears for Quidditch matches, or analyze the inflection of Dumbledore’s words as he passes his wisdom to Harry, or laugh at Hermione’s hair as it fluffs over a boiling cauldron of Living Death (to which, by the way, I can certainly relate). JK Rowling has developed an entire story-world that captivates my imagination, and I simply enjoy her masterpiece in its entirety. Most likely, when you spot me at the gym or driving in my truck (whose name is Rosey because I love flowers), I am singing and conducting to Harry Potter soundtracks. No shame.

Okay, so calling myself a “Cat Whisperer” may be an exaggeration – but I do like to pretend that my Siamese, Frederic, and I have conversations sometimes. Over a casual lunch, my mother spoiled her birthday surprise and claimed to have found the PERFECT present for me: a kitten. I flipped. I had wanted my very own cat since I was little (I had several cats while growing up, but they all despised me – possibly because I dressed them up in doll clothes and claimed them to be my children, but who knows?). We brainstormed for a couple hours names for the precious addition to the family. Being lovers of antiques and also a musical family, we settled on Frederic, after my favorite composer, Frederic Chopin. We rushed to PetCo and ironically, the owner and breeder of Frederic-To-Be was seeing to him and his two sisters. As soon as I laid eyes on this little white furball with the big, blue eyes, I was sold. Done deal. Even though he was only six weeks old, we took him with us to settle him into his new home. Oh! did I mention my father was a hunter and not fond of cats?

As a musician, I have had years of private lessons and participated in a wide variety of ensembles and productions, but never had I been put through a program like the Collinsworth School of Music. It is, honestly, a musician’s boot camp—tough and rigorous—but once completed, you will have adequate knowledge and experience to stand toe-to-toe with any professional in the business. Thirteen of my units this semester are music classes, including two singing ensembles, one small singing group where I am the pianist, and three private lessons. Each day is a workout for my music brain, challenging my training and skills to grow to a higher, more sophisticated standard. I thrive on learning the techniques of music, the history from earlier times and cultures, and the science and theories involved. God continues to use me musically and is developing the gift of music in my life to further His kingdom and to glorify Him. The passion I have for this art has rooted deep into my heart and into the very core of who I am, and I am here at CBU to develop the talents God gave me and learn to share them to glorify Him.

Just a small snippet from my heart to share, but trust me, what BIG parts they play!