Thanksgiving

So what am I thankful for from this past 12 months? Oh, so many things.

I'm thankful for my re-dedication of my life to Christ. I'm thankful for a family that supports me in whatever I do and encourages me in the various things of life that sometimes cause me to worry. I'm thankful that my brother and sister (in law) have a healthy, lovely little boy who is teaching me a whole new kind of love I never thought I would understand. I'm thankful for the eye opening experiences I've been given just in the past six months of my life. I'm thankful for being so incredibly blessed by God with a father who works his tail off to supply me with the ability to go to college. I'm thankful that, even with the drama of school, I can attend a Christian college that challenges me in my faith. I'm thankful for 8 other girls at school who challenge me. I'm thankful for the trails and pain that I go through that only pull me closer to God. I'm thankful for the progress (or sometimes lack thereof), of my books. I'm thankful for the ability to wake up every morning, safe, warm, and knowing that I don't have to worry about where my next meal comes from. I'm thankful for a God that loves us so much that He became flesh and died for us so that we might know Him and join Him in Heaven.

And that's a short list.

But it's Thanksgiving break, and primarily, I'm thankful for the ability to be allowed to stay up till my lovely 3am and sleep till 9 and not have to worry about missing class. I got home around 11pm last night after dropping off two friends from Houghton and then was up till 3 attempting to work on anything, and then when higher brain function decided to allude me, submitted myself to sitting on my computer and played Bejeweled Blitz for an hour. In that hour, I was attempting to solve the world's problems, yet terribly inefficiently.

And then today I just slept in and then allowed myself the simple luxury of lying in bed till noon and rereading the Chronicles of Narnia. (FYI: December 10th The Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes out in theaters - be there!) And then I visited my good friend Carlen Wirth who will be gone for a year and a half in the mission field, and I can't wait to see her after her time there! It will be such a rewarding experience for her; I know it.

For now, I'm home until Sunday and plan to work on homework tomorrow (ah homework; the bane of my existence), and then have some turkey with the family and probably play a game while the football game screams from our backroom.

In other words, we will attempt to have an 'easy' Thanksgiving day and it will probably turn into chaos. Yep, that's how things normally are at the Markloff house. (Funny story, this blog's first suggestion for spelling of my last name is "Markdown". Because that makes sense.)

For now, I bid thee farewell and will attempt to work some more on my book proposal in case I get the nerve to send it out to another agent. (Rachel Kent sadly will not be my agent as she did not know any publishers or editors that would be print my kind of 'heavy fantasy'. Oh well, God's got it under control.)

Good night and happy Thanksgiving! You can officially listen to Christmas music and not look crazy :)

I've Been Away

So much time has passed since the summer, and especially since my last post. Quite a bit has transpired since then, not much to the cause of 'holy crap my life has changed dramatically', but things have occurred.

My good friend Dusty Jo has become Mrs. Cradduck, and that was a very packed, yet fun filled three days. It was a great chance to see my very close friends from Houghton and spend some time with them outside of school and outside of work obligations.

Jon and Mallory now have a son named Caleb Reese Markloff who, as of today, is 3 1/2 months old. He's mostly muscle and enjoys trying to stand when given the chance. He's just like his dad. And as of his last doctor's visit three days ago, he really does not care for shots, (I can't say as I blame him).

My adventures at the Christian Writer's Conference down at Philadelphia Biblical University were eye opening and further solidification that the publication world is the world in which I wish to belong one day. I met with many charismatic agents and editors, all of which had good things to say about my first book. Currently, I have a book proposal off at Books & Such Literary Agency, and I pray that God has implemented the timing to be His and for the actions from here on out to be His. As the days pass and people ask how the book is coming and I inform them of the proposal out to Rachel Kent, (who was a fantastic person to chat with for 15 minutes, and I was honored to get to spend the time with her), I find the momentary worry of 'what if'.

And then I stop myself and remember that God has everything under control. He created the world, He can surely handle one book proposal.

While this semester at Houghton has been stressful to say the least, I have found more opportunities to learn who I am in Christ, and who God is as my Father, and His plans for me. While at times what He has called me for seem daunting and nearly impossible, when I speak with Him, He reminds me that through Him all things are possible. And I am grateful that He is so very patient with me at every turn.

I am tired, and as I said, stressed, but know that in the end of it all, this will seem like a small blip on the radar compared to what lies ahead. While the future is unknown to me, it is not unknown to God. He holds it all in His hands, and I can rest comfortably, (even if only for six hours a night), that my Father in Heaven watches over me and protects me. And with someone like that walking before me, beside me and behind me, who else need I fear?

Holy Heck!

To borrow the phrase from my good friend Shelly Manhart; holy heck!

To believe that the conference is next week is mind boggling to me. Is it already that time? Have we already approached mid August? Okay, so technically, no, we haven't, but I feel as though we have! Mostly due to the fact that this next week will probably fly by.

I stand currently on a draft number 4 of my novel, and I feel comfortable with it. I hope, pray and believe that this is what God wants from me, and that He will take this conference and mold it to His will, and not my own.

I just wish that I had more time.

I'm being perfectly honest. I feel exhausted, and I have work in ten hours (so I've got some time to sleep), but regardless, I've been running on far too little sleep, and at this precise moment, all I want to do is go ahead and write, edit, and revise. I don't want to go to Staples and wander about a building for eight hours, I want to pursue my book, I want to find God in it. I want to make sure that it's what He needs it to be, not what I want it to be. And it's hard to find the time - or rather make the time - to edit and revise the current draft I have. I'm proud of myself for reaching the landmarks that I have, and I feel accomplished, I would just love it if I could spend more time in it.

Technically, from drafts 3 to 4, there aren't many changes. A glossary, a few small edits here and there where grammatical errors were appearing and problems with my choice of description (which sucks by the way), and a prologue and minor chapter that will probably be axed because they really aren't necessary, I just felt they needed to be there. So for all I know, an editor or agent will look at them and say, "Why are these here?"

"Because I like them?" I don't know. I'm making this up as I go along. I'm only twenty-two after all.

Regardless of my age, however, I feel a cross between content and on edge. I know that the feeling of apprehension and the never ending nerves are things I need to turn to God for, because He'll take care of me, and I'm working on getting that to constantly be the case, not merely when I acknowledge that it is the case.

*Sigh* It's been a while since writing, and I felt I wanted to write some about where I was, if only for my own benefit. But as it is quarter after 1 in the morning, I should get to bed so as I'm not completely exhausted at work tomorrow...today...whatever.

Here's to God's grace and His plans to me. Let's see where He's leading :)

Why?

Why? Why? Why?

It’s the eternal question. We probably ask why every day in some form or another. But me? I’m on the verge of screaming in frustration. I’m sitting here, wondering about life after college. I’m wondering about the grace of God and how above all the crap and “necessities” we put up in life, we should be glorifying His name and spreading the good news to the four corners of the earth. I’m sitting here wondering, why we’re stuck in college, spending money that could go to other things in life, like helping someone who doesn’t have enough money to feed themselves for another day. I’m sitting here wondering why we spend the prime of our lives sitting classrooms, stressing over exams and numbers and stupid things like that. I’m sitting here wondering why we have to stress over everything. I’m sitting here wondering, why? Why? Why?

Innate curiosity is what leads to the question of why. We want to know. We want to understand. We’re human, and we’re flawed. We want to understand, because we like logic, we like order, we like when things make sense.

But this? This doesn’t make sense. And we just go with it like it’s okay. And I’m on the edge, ready to start screaming that I want people to realize that it’s not okay. We go with the status quo, we stick to what we’ve been told. We don’t color outside the lines anymore. Everyone thinks that if we do, chaos will fall down on us and we won’t know how to survive the fall of the debris.

Life was never meant to be complicated. Life was never meant to be painful or fearful. Life was meant to be filled with laughter, joy, grace and purity. Instead we’ve turned it into something that signifies death: we work ourselves in school to get ahead of everyone else. We get to college and we do it all over again, to be the best, to look “the part” of the perfect person, the perfect marriage, the perfect man, the perfect woman. We marry “the part”, we discard it because it wasn’t what we thought. We marry another “the part”, and it still isn’t what we need. We run amuck, we cheat, we steal, we lie, we take no responsibility for our actions, we destroy, we deceive, we ultimately obliterate ourselves and all those around us. We, humans, have become a cancer. And we’re okay with that?

I’m not.

Sayings of hope and peace have become cliché, and no one wants to hear them anymore. Sayings like, “be the change you want to see in the world”, is now something everyone rolls their eyes at, it has no meaning anymore. Words like, ‘love’, ‘forever’, and ‘joy’ are overused. Their meanings are now meaningless. Their light is now faded, useless in the darkness, because no one uses them in the proper context anymore.

Women starve themselves because an image tells them to. Men put on the tough guy act because if they show one shred of emotion, they’re suddenly not men anymore. Children are being raised by nannies, baby sitters, and grandparents, because parents just don’t give enough time for their kids. People become so stressed and depressed because no one listens anymore to one another, we’re all so wrapped up in ourselves that we’re not looking at the people around us.

I want to strip the world of those blinders. I want to scream at them, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see what we’re doing to ourselves?” but no one listens. The voices of those outraged by our indignity and inhumanity are lost in the wind, because we all have to be individuals, just so long as your individuality doesn’t offend anyone.

We point the finger at another and curse them out, telling them they’re wrong, they’re inconsiderate, they’re not being politically correct. But if someone points the finger at us, oh no, we can’t have that. I’m always right, you’re the one that’s always wrong. I win, you lose. I live, you die. It doesn’t matter, so long as I’m the one that ends up on top. And yet we tell our kids name calling is bad, it’s rude, you shouldn’t do it. Then what are we, if not hypocrites?

We’ve twisted the rules, we’ve flipped the game board to match our needs, and not the needs of those around us, we’ve moved the deck of cards closer to us so we don’t have to reach as far, but the person across from us has to get up to draw their next card. We cut in line, saying we’re more entitled than those that have been waiting for hours. We’ve become completely self absorbed. We admonish people for being self centered, selfish and all around self consumed, yet we turn around and do the same thing.

It all comes down to one thing: we’re broken.

We’re broken, and there’s only one thing that can fix it. The only problem that remains is the fact that no one believes in that one thing that can fix us. Why is that?

What have we done? Can we redeem ourselves? Do we want to be redeemed?

Final Paper Anxiety/Frustration

I am going to take a quick moment to talk about the conundrum of homework and tests and finals that every college student in the history of the world is exceedingly well acquainted with. Mostly due to the fact that this semester is the first time in a long time that I’ve been so stressed about projects, papers, and term finals that I’ve become ill to the point of wanting to commit to unconsciousness at 7 in the evening.

For those of you that know me, that’s a problem. For those of you that don’t, I’m naturally nocturnal, and my body doesn’t normally feel the wear of a day until around 2 or 3 in the morning. If I’m saying I want to go to bed at 7 at night, then I’m either sick, or about to become sick. And it appears as though my workload has done just that.

This is the frustration, my biggest beef, with school. Out of all the other little bumps and hiccups that present themselves along the years, this one still remains. All students have been there. You’re sitting in class, and it’s the last two weeks or so of school. Your professor is standing at the front of the classroom, and you already know that you’ve got a paper or project due for the class in a week, and you’re hoping it will be adequate enough to help you pass the class. It’s nearing the end of class, or maybe it’s at the beginning, but the professor sits down or leans on a desk or something and says, “I know that it’s a busy time of year for you guys and you’ve got a lot on your plates,” and then you groan because you know there’s going to be at least a but, and at most an addition to your plate, normally in the form of another quick presentation you’ve gotta do or a quick exam you need to take before you even enter finals week.

So, this is my question; if you see the pattern, if you actually see it and acknowledge that your students are getting burnt out and not sleeping and are forgetting to eat, what compels them to add things to your list of things to do? Is that not the definition of insanity; to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

Then you enter finals week, or hell week, depending on who you ask. And we kill ourselves so we can have a number to follow us and hold us where we will in the class line up and in the waiting line for scholarships. No offence, but no number is worth my sanity or my health.

If it weren’t completely impossible to do anything beyond flipping burgers, (it’s a cliché), I would not be going through this torment that people call college. I would be perfectly content with a high school diploma.

Call me lazy. Call me a procrastinator. I’ll be honest and tell you that’s true. But on the other side of the coin is the fact that we’ve allowed ourselves to call insanity smart thinking. We’ve allowed ourselves to take the strongest points of our bodies lives and spend them sitting classrooms, becoming stressed about grades and classes, and not being properly caring of our bodies because we just plain don’t have time.

When did this happen? Why do we accept this? This absurdity needs to change; because eventually, we won’t know how to enjoy life, because we’ll be too busy trying to figure out how to get a better score than so and so on something, or make more money than what’s her face. Humans were not meant for what we spend our time doing. We were meant for interaction, for love, for devotion, for friendship. Yet we sit in rooms, by ourselves, typing away on computers trying to write a ten page paper on something that could be explained in two!

But for some reason we need to explain something to the umpteenth degree to ensure that not only do we know how to find other people who share our views, but we can reiterate it twenty times to meet a set number of sources that agree with us.

This is absurd.

Opening Doors to the Future

So, as I have stated in the past, my floormates out here at Houghton College have been the best thing for me to ever have been given from my experiences here. Why start this entry as such? Well, very simply, they are awesome. I went home again with Shelly two weekends ago and we got, once again, onto the topic of who we are in the world and what we hope to gain from the future.

The biggest of which for me was explaining to Shelly that, the longer that time goes on, the more that I feel God saying that the world isn't ready for me yet, but it will be soon. And that terrified me for a while. Two nights ago, Alaina, Dana, Erin and I were up till like, two in the morning, talking about life and the future. Two years. That's what I've got left, roughly. So what does that entail? Can I ready myself for the world in that short an amount of time?

My hope is that, within two years, I can have a first book manuscript ready and presentable for me to go try to find an agent with, and attempt to get it published. Alaina and I have already readied ourselves for the rejections we'll get from our stories. Well, Alaina has. Me? I don't know yet. I'm sure my hands will still be trembling at each letter I receive, and I will still have a silent prayer with a pounding heart as I tear it open in the hope that it may not have been rejected.

Am I meant for the world to hear? I don't know. I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what lies ahead for me. I hope great things, because I feel that's what God wants from me. But in no concrete fashion do I know what will become of me within the next two years. I cannot guarantee that my book will be influential. I cannot guarantee that I will become what I hope to become. I can guarantee that regardless of where I go, and regardless of what I do, God will be with me, and He will love me for who I am, not for what I may or may not become.

Wow, I find comfort in that. What a wonderful feeling! To come back to the heart of worship I had so readily run away from two years ago, and know that my past is my past, but my God loves me today, tomorrow, and forever. To what do I owe the honor to be called His daughter? I guess He just loves me like that. I don't even know why, but God, I love that You love me!

I laugh freely, I smile openly, I talk warmly, I attempt to love unconditionally. Whether or not I succeed, well, yeah, we'll see about that.

Hey, it's a New Year! So, resolutions for the year? Well...seriously now: overall, be better at what I know I can be better at. And seriously look into the publishing of my book. Take the steps. Do the motions. Start the process. Begin the journey.

Whelp, it's time to move on. I should finish up my homework before it gets to be too late. For now, to my cyber-readers and non-announced people that possibly read this, Goodnight, good luck, and God bless you wherever you go and in whatever you do.

"Out of all the voices calling out to me, I will choose to listen and believe the voice of truth."