19 Days and Counting . . .

19 Days. 19 days to get all of my supplies together and packed. 19 days until I pack my stuff in the van and head back up to school. 19 days until I spend another excrutiatingly long 9 months away from my family. 19 days. (*sigh*) I am honestly not sure what is going through my head right now. I guess it's full of mixed emotions.

I guess I'm scared because I'm nervous about how my grades are gonna be, but at the same time, I'm also not looking forward to 3/4th's of my life spent in northern Wisconsin in almost total suclusion. 9 Months were 7 of them have at least 4 inches of snow on the ground, and 6 of them have tempratures below freezing, and the snow starts in October where here in Indiana snow starts in December or Janurary.


(*sigh*) School. 5 days of getting up at 6 and 7 o'clock in the morning in order to get to devotions on time. 5 days of alternating class schedules. Sometimes starting class at 1:30 pm. and getting out at 3:30 pm., and other times starting at 8:00 am. and getting out at 4:30 pm. Yeah, it makes for a long day. I think Choir was my favorite though. You could sit down and sing. Sing for all you were worth. Singing and playing piano helps me forget the stress and troubles of a day. The Christmas and Spring Concert are definetly my favorite times of the school year because we get to memorize a bunch of beautiful songs that praise our Redeemer, and then perform them in front of the whole student body.


Summer has been amazing. I've had a few great outings with me and "the guys" usually consisting of my brother and one or two other guy friends, and a lot of the time we ended up encouraging each other spiritually. That was nice because sometimes summer can be so dry . . . not just with the heat, but spiritually as well because I don't have the constant Christian fellowship that I had at school. I'm really looking forward to getting back to my friends and amazing teachers. I went to the beach a few times this summer (and thankfully got a decent tan) and took a few pictures.

This was a sunset that we saw while we were in Saugatuck, Michigan at Oval Beach.

This was "homemade" I guess you could say. My brother had just walked across in front of me, and so I wrote the word "Footprints" over head of the prints he had just made in the sand. Reminding me of the poem "Footprints in the sand.
"One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?”

The Lord replied,
“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
is when I carried you.”"

I have so many memories of this summer . . . it would take several months to name all of them, and share all of the different times I captured with my camera. But I do know this. If I hadn't had the encouragment from some of my friends from school, I wouldn't be who I am today. I would probably have fallen away from the Lord and not be returning to school. It wasn't exactely good circumstances that drove me to this, it was more of the times when I saw my friends falling away and I didn't want them too, so I tried to pull them back, and in the process I helped myself by realizing that God is the only one that will ever satisfy. As I return to school in 19 days, I am not going to go worried about what might happen, but I will remember that the Lord already has my future planned out, and He will only do what is best for me. 19 days and counting . . . not exactely until school starts, but 19 days until I can put what I have learned this summer into practise.