Embers

  Looking back at my posts from nearly a year ago (oh my, has it been that long?), I remember how I felt. Everything seemed so utterly meaningless. But I kept hope. My hope was in God, and it was beautiful. So, in the words of this song, I "kept the fire alive". Even though there have always been highs and lows in my life, even though things have changed a lot, God carried me through a lot of it.


Grateful and blessed <3

-KH

People, Races, Hillbillies and school....

Today was awesome :) first and foremost because of the people involved. 

We won our powderpuff football game, which was a spectacularly close win. Second, the cross country meet was awesome! I continually beat my time which is very, very encouraging. I understand Hebrews 12:1 much better now. 

  Also, it was "dress like a hillbilly day" at school, so I wore camo and cowgirl boots. It was a nice break from the school uniform. 

  But the thing that topped today and made it spectacular was the people. I've made some great friends down here who I feel perfectly comfortable around. Rebecca, Cody, Pattie, Peyton, Braden, Mason, Leah: y'all need to know that you're awesome. And very important to me :) thanks for being spectacular people. 

Quick post for a crazy day :) 

-KH

Response to Article "If You Send Your Kid To Private School, You Are A Bad Person."

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html


^ The Article.

\/ The Response

This is nonsense. 

First of all, it states "It’s simple! Everyone needs to be invested in our public schools in order for them to get better." 
AND 
"if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve." 

The public education system does not work for every single child. Some kids learn much better from staying home, or attending a smaller school with a smaller classroom. Not to mention, if this article got what it wanted, and every kid went to public school, the numbers of children per facility would be exponentially increased. The issue is the failure on the part of the government to efficiently use the money designated for the schools, as well as their obstinate opinion that "everything is fine". It is much easier for children to be drug down by a terrible school than for the children to lift the school up and make it more prestigious. 

Want to fix this problem? Send a letter to a state congressman. Don't rant about it on Slate, or suggest such ridiculous measures that in your solution, every child goes to public school. 

Team Rudolph

  Anyone who has seen me play traditional sports gets an idea of my capabilities very quickly. I am not Micheal Jordan, Lionel Messi, Troy Polamalu or Mario Lemu. Yes, these are all names I know. My point is that I don't tend to exactly shine when the ball gets thrown my way. Typically I dodge and hope there is minimal damage.While personally I know that my abilities lie elsewhere, these demonstrations of skill tend to make my fellow players wary in passing me the ball.... ever. Today I played with the Washington Street Church of Christ at a sports day. These people, even the ones who do not play competitively, play these games far more often than I do. I went with my cousin, and for the last few games of basketball, no one passed us the ball to the point that it became comical. We called ourselves Team Rudolph because, well, for clarification click this link.

  Sometimes it proverbially kills me to try to endure hours of team sports when no one will trust me with the ball, but at the same time it is a humbling experience and a lot of good can come out of not being the beast in a sport. Victors write the news and the history books, and I think often the guy who is cleaning stalls or striking it out on the basketball court overhears a lot of the victorious chatter. I like Iron Man 3 for a few reasons. First, the villain is cunning. More, the villain come out of nowhere. He begins a broke computer techie with big plans and eventually evolves into a villainous mastermind. The only reason the villain becomes a villain at all is because the good guy turns his back on him. Because the good guy failed to take an interest in what the villain had to say, the villain ended up ruthlessly demolishing both lives and property.
  My point in all this is to demonstrate the potency of faith in a fellow human and that fellow human's reaction to a lack of trust from others. If I'm on a basketball court and no one passes me the ball because I'm not a good player, I take it in stride because hey, it's just a game; but it makes me wonder how I would handle it if no one passed me a ball in the basketball court of life. Would I choose an aggressive path to yank the ball from their grasp, with not regard to the sanctity of their situation? Or, would I choose to wait patiently for the ball while doing nothing?

  As a Christian, it's important to keep practicing while I'm waiting for the ball to be passed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7TSGptd3Y  This song, "While I am Waiting" by John Waller talks about "waiting" in our Christian lives. It's a powerful song, especially for young people. As a friend wrote:
"We often talk about our futuristic selves and wow! we're so patient, outgoing, hospitable, generous, and evangelistic. But if we aren't utilizing today to mold our hearts and abilities, time will creep up on us and we'll still be waiting on our new and improved futuristic selves to appear. God only gives us a day at a time -- it's up to us to make the most of it."


  I'll just close with that (: 

That's funny, you guys........ Not really.

  It seems like every time we move I get my hopes up for certain things. I pace off fields and woods dreaming of horses and cattle while my parents look on, watching my dreams formulate. After all, who are they to crush something when it is only in the daydream stage?

 The problem is that I've always wanted to put a horse on the property where I live, regardless of how good it would be for the horse or how well I could take care of it. So I've daydreamed, and it's always stopped there. Now we're moving to Tennessee, and I have 9 fenced off acres at my disposal and a barn that can easily be converted to a few stalls. Now I only have to wait to own a horse, so my fantasies have become a lot more real. I haven't let myself dream too much yet - I'll wait until we actually move down here until I start getting overly excited.

Beautiful Therapy

Today I learned about beautiful therapy - the power of love of beauty.

 Beauty in and of itself is not healing, but it often accompanies healing and is, perhaps, one of the greatest assets to "feeling better". Here's a quick summary of my notes on the subject:

Beautiful vs. Ugly. Ugly most certainly does not mean something that is physically ugly. Get in your mind and think of something that's ugly. Personally, murder and sloth come to mind. That's the kind of thing that consummate beauty can help with.
 "Here a beauty, there a beauty, everywhere a healing beauty."
- If you are surrounded by beauty, ugly things are easier to smother. Surround yourself with lovely things. Beauty varies per-person. 

 If you're in a rut in life, think about doing that thing that you love doing. Daydream and make beautiful things, because if you can change your mind into a beautiful place, you reap so much more from each moment. Everything is connected, everything is beautiful.

 Here's the thing. The physically beautiful things that I try to surround myself with are strange. During the session the speaker said that it could be a photograph of yourself doing a thing you love, or simply a very happy picture of yourself. Seeing "good" pictures of yourself is actually psychological therapy, while seeing a picture of anyone angry or confused (especially yourself) can cause a slight mental aggravation.

 Here's what I've done since that session;

 I pulled a laser-etched horse out of storage and put it on my window.
Made my computer background a picture of me on a horse.
Colored a glass coke bottle with a Sharpie.
Switched from conventional history notes to beautiful ones.
Started using colorful highlighters for bible study.
After the AP exam I'm even going to work on making my blog more beautiful.

I do not stress self-love. We don't have a problem loving ourselves. The main reason, the long term goal for therapy is to be able to love others and help those who need it. If our troubles emotionally impede us, we are not as effective in helping others.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Have you looked around?

 We live in a wicked and depraved generation. A generation where everything is comical and nothing is serious. What's the most serious thing you can think of? Demons? Outcasts? Oaths?
 All of those things have been turned into something comical by our generation! It quite honestly sickens me.

 Humor can be used in a beneficial manor. In fact, God gave us humor. He wants us to be able to laugh! Think about how sad simple existence would be without the giggle of a youngster or the laugh of an elderly lady. Also, humor builds bridges with people we otherwise would have nothing in common with.

 I think often, people say that God tells us to be serious constantly. The verse is often referenced "They will be judged for every careless word they speak." (Eph. 5:15-21). My interpretation of that verse is very different. We should *not* be filling ourselves with pointless or silly things. But there is room for clean humor. For instance "Once upon a time... there was salsa." is a pretty random and silly statement. It's pointless, so we shouldn't be filling our time with it, but occasionally it can break the ice and make people laugh.

 As for these people who say "I swear...", I wish they could see just how serious that it. Recently, I read a story called "Percy Jackson and the Olympians". It is a wonderful work of fiction, but one scene stands intensely in my mind. A scene where someone "swears" and it turns out to be a much bigger deal than predicted.

Thoughts?

Comment issues.

I'm having issues with the comment section on this blog. Can anyone help me figure it out? Blogger won't let me reply to comments or even create new comments on my own posts.

Thanks for any help I can get!

The one about approval.

 It seems as though the approval of other equivalent and persistently pessimistic humans puts our very morality at stake.
 If we were made to seek approval from others, we would die in spiral of unfathomable promises and decimated hopes. Like a cup of over-steeped tea, the bitterness could not be overshadowed by the honey of approval. Individuals who are, by all appearances, oblivious to the disappointment of the people around them put off a reckless air that they uphold with an outwardly invincible finesse. You know the type of people I've just described. They hold their heads proudly come hell or high water, and discipline, even of the most stringent sort, causes no apparent irreparable damage to them.

 I am never absolute on the best handling procedure for this type. I tend to ignore them until they drag my miffed expression into their tomfoolery. Now, these people, typically though not always male, vary in age. I'm reading the Harry Potter books to my younger brothers, and these young delinquents tend to blurt out spoilers such as "Snape's the half blood prince" and "Dumbledore dies" at no gain to themselves. Troublemakers like these who have only watched the movie and proceed to soil the experience for my brother make me twitch with indignation.

This year, summarized.

From this day one year ago to this day, I have grown and changed in many, many ways. I’ve experienced love,  and on the opposite end of the spectrum, heartbreak. I thought I knew so much before this year, and now I know that I know nothing. This year, continuously, I would feel as though I had it all together and the moment I felt collected, someone unceremoniously yanked the carpet of reality from under my feet and I fell flat on my face. This year has been a war of staying balanced on that rug that I never felt as though I could trust.

On April 16th, 2012, I lived in a house in New Oxford in a lovely, ignorant calm before the ensuing storm. Then we heard that there was a house we’d likely be moving into. I got excited because I like those kind of changes and I was ready to be in a much better location as it looked like this house would be. While my parents bravely endured the battle with the financing company, I was able to relax and focus on finals. Eventually, the company promised us that we could move in by the end of August and we listened to them. At the end of the month, we moved out of that house and went on a two-month homeless adventure. We switched from tents to yurts to cabins to friend’s houses to my grandparent’s houses. Eventually we talked to the owner of the house, signed papers on the hood of a truck in Hanover and moved in  that evening.

I can not present to you how I have grown this year without factoring death into the equation. I attended eight funerals this year, six of them family. The two that struck me the most, (if I was to pick two, because they were all really sad) were my Aunt Heather, who died suddenly after simply “not feeling well” and my Uncle Mark who committed suicide. Words don’t seem to be enough to say how that affected me this year.Especially the latter was the loss of a close friend that I never saw coming. Then, the rug of reality was brutally ripped from underneath me again.

But out of all this turmoil, this heartbreak, this fear and these tears comes a new chapter. I developed a relationship with his best friend, and I’ve stayed close to Amy, his fiance. I am surrounded by amazing people, and they showed me that I am, even when I’ve   emotionally lost my cool and mentally couldn’t remember what I had just read or heard. Some of my friends who took an interest in my emotional healing took me out and taught me to snowboard. Some people say that snowboarding is for punks, but I don’t think so. For me it’s more than a fun thing,it will always stand in my memory as a few hours when I couldn’t stop smiling in a time when I hadn’t truly smiled for weeks.

I love games. Pretty much all kinds of games. Sports, board games, mind games, card games etc. I love to read fiction even more. Sometimes I spend so much time reading fiction and playing games that I forget that school is important too. This year, I think AP and CC have helped me develop away from my game-playing obsession, though it never worked me out of my fiction reading fetish.

I was baptised on June 21st, 2011 and I’ve grown much closer to God since then. There was a phase when I questioned God, and was even mad at him, in the week when I attended two funerals. I learned that he was there, though. He had to drag me along my Christian walk sometimes to keep me going, but he was always there. I learned that trusting him is hard, but not impossible.

Last year tested my emotional capacity.

I lost much that was important to me. I learned that while I can not ignore my losses, I need to focus on the future. There are so many amazing things ahead, and likely terrifying things, but I will embrace them and add them to this crazy thing called life. I know myself better than I did one year ago, and I should not have written as much about myself if there were anyone whom I knew better. I am me, conveniently.

I’ll close with some song lyrics;
Everybody wants to slap your back, wants to shake your hand when you’re up on top of that mountain. But let one of those rocks give way, then you slide back down. Look up, and see who’s around then. When the water’s high, when the weather’s not so fair, when the well runs dry - who will be there? That’s when you find out who your friends are.

Mountains and moguls and snow - oh my!

Today is the last day of dear Ski Liberty. I feel the need to tell the story of just exactly how I, a horseback-riding, tea-drinking, wannabe-journalist black belt from a farm house came to snowboarding. Last year, winter 2011-12, I had these friends. They were quite simply pretty really totally awesome, and they invited me to come "snowboarding" - this thing of which I knew very little. I had been skiing a few times, and I had fun, but it wasn't "interesting". So they prodded a bit and I didn't come just because I just didn't feel like it. This year, winter 2012-13, they mentioned it again. I gave it little notice until I heard "discount". "Exactly how much does it cost?" I asked. They told me, and it was actually pretty do-able. After all, this is a one time thing, right? I went home and put the date on the calendar. It was the time during the school year where there doesn't seem to be much to look forward to, so I looked forward to going, I suppose.

 The first time I went, the weather was a lovely cloudy gray, and it was about 0 degrees Fahrenheit at the top of the mountain. We pulled in the vacant parking lot (being home-schooled I could go on a weekday :), and I saw a few punks walking into the lodge... I couldn't help but notice that they were all hoisting expensive, shiny snowboards. I wondered in passing what I had gotten myself into.

  So eventually we got outside of the lodge, snowboards in tow, and I watched as my friends who had taken me magically attached their boards to their feet and glided over the snow to the base of a lift. The youngest stayed behind for a moment. He looked at me and said "I think your lesson is in a minute or two. I'll be right back." I watched as both the group of friends departed for a lift to my far right, and the youngest of the group headed to one in the middle. They all got on the lifts, and were gone.

 "Hey, you're snowboarding?" asked a suave dude with a green coat, sunglasses and a bandanna. "Yeah." I said. "Okay, let's get started."
"OH COOL"  I thought. I grabbed my board and was planning on heading for the middle lift when the instructor turned towards the last place I thought I was going - the bunny slope. So my lesson continued. I managed, in the end, to get down without falling. That took a surprising amount of perseverance.

 Three months and many, many falls later, I was at the top of the mountain with my best friends. Maybe it was karate for a few years, maybe it was that I've known them since I was eight years old, maybe it was arisoft, maybe it was even snowboarding, but these people who at first drug me along made my "best friend" list, which is actually a pretty select list. Either way, I was at the top of the mountain. My friends were really REALLY patient with me, and I think if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have ever tried some of the slopes that I did this year. Yes, I did all of them besides the black diamonds. No, I haven't done moguls yet. Yes, I've gotten past the dorkiness of the helmet because it saved my life a few times.... or at least my skull. 

Pictures: Above; me and my friends, down (1) Dear sister and me (2) A photo I made. 

Moguls and mountains and lifts and lights, goggles and boards and snowball fights.

Daydreaming

I was studying pretty intently today, accomplishing a lot. My sister had previously been in my room and had way - I mean WAY - overdone it with the perfume. So I opened a window and shut off the heat. If you live where I do, it's about 60 degrees outside. That's really nice for the day before Easter. There I was, accomplishing things, when I realized that putting my desk next to the window was a really terrible design flaw. I ended up staring out the open window, a warm breeze tickling my face and a steady rush of perfume out the window. Also, I had finished a brutal water fight with my siblings (coughcough I lost coughcough) about an hour ago and dried, so I could smell the grass on me. It was just so warm and pleasant that I got to thinking, upon staring at the field outside my window, just how lovely it would be if I could have horses in that field. I began to wonder how much a barn would cost and how long it would take to build, I wondered what my parents would do if they had to take care of horses when I went to college, college doesn't have to be far away, does it? I wondered if I could take horses with me. I caught myself in the spiral of daydreaming. It was irritating that I had to break from it because I needed to study.

And that is the story of how my textbook got thrown out the window, kids.

5655 down, X number to go.

Interesting thought: I've only been on this earth for 5655 days.
That means I have approximately 22,995 days left.... not as long as I thought.

Hmm.... 23,000 sunrises.


Time to go do something important.