He is enough

He is enough. Jesus is enough. No matter how this whole thing comes out, whether I go to college or not, He is in control. The Lord has a plan, and all I am here for is to glorify Him. He is enough.

Fall

There's something about fall that always gets me. The brilliant colors, the crisp air, the playful breezes that knock one off one's feet. Everything seems to come alive, in one last great burst of life before winter settles in to lull things to sleep. The weather is perfect, cold enough to wear my favorite coat, but warm enough to go without a scarf and boots.
I love looking out of the back windows and seeing a shifting sea of crimson and orange. My favorite time is when not all of the trees have turned yet, so some are green with occasional bursts of orange. Along the road I take to symphony there is one tree that I always look for, as it always turns earlier than the rest. I drive through a sea of green, and then just around a turn there is this flame of scarlet, shooting proudly towards the sky. It catches my breath every time. I love walking through the carpet of leaves on the ground, crunching busily. I love watching the wind catch a tree, whirling the leaves off of the branches and tumbling them to the ground. I love the smell of pumpkin pie baking in the oven (even though I don't actually like to eat it, shocking, I know). The smells of cinnamon and vanilla wafting from candles lighted throughout the house, the sunshine on my sisters' hair, the toothless pumpkins grinning on doorsteps, all of these bring me joy.
Every fall I realize afresh how much stuff the Lord has created, how creative His mind is, and how short I fall of His glory. I am always brought to a new awareness of how far I stand from Him, and how enormous the sacrifice was for Him to bring me closer. May my every thought give Him glory.

Count Your Blessings

There's a song in White Christmas; a duet between Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney. She can't sleep, so she goes down to the kitchen (where Bing is noodling on the piano), to get a snack. They meet, talk, and end up singing a song about "if you're worried, and you can't sleep, just count your blessings, instead of sheep". I've been rather depressed lately, and wondering what's up with my life, so I'm gonna count my blessings and see what happens.....

1) An entire family.
2) Food to eat. While it's not the food I would prefer to eat, it's still food and it fills my belly.
3) My own room. I don't have to share with anyone, I can have it as clean or as messy as I want and nobody cares. What a rich blessing indeed.
4) A violin, and an amazing teacher.
5) "Cousins" that love me, are close by, and let me come to their house whenever I want to chill. Especially
6) My 4-yr-old cousin who screams my name and runs to me with arms outstretched every time she sees me; no matter whether it's the first time in a week, or the first time in an hour. I don't deserve her.
7) A wonderful church family. People say hi to me, ask how I'm doing, and they really care. I never knew that could happen.
8) Clothes.
9) The coolest dad in the world.
10) Books. What would the world be like without them? A tragedy.


I have so many blessings; why am I so frail that I moan over and over about how my life is in "the depths of despair"? Why do I become so unsatisfied with my lot, why do I find it so hard to bloom where I am planted?

"For the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9

The LORD has my life in the palm of His hand. He has created the entire universe, orchestrated billions of lives through thousands of years toward His perfect plan. He has sent His only Son to die a horrible death, take the sins of those billions of lives upon His shoulders, so that I might live to glorify Him. And I, weak, pitiful, frail human being that I am, cannot remember that. My agenda is so small, so weak, compared to His great glory and majesty. What business have I to complain?

Jazz Love

So, in orchestra we have been working on the "pops" bit of the semester and this year Dr. Dissmore said that our program would be entitled: "Jazz Meets the Orchestra". Humph, I thought, this will be interesting. I mean, I know what jazz is. It's funky music played by weirdos that has no real rhyme or rhythm. And Mom and Chrissy like it; enough said. Or so I thought.

We get about two weeks into rehearsals, and I discover that I really had no idea whatsoever about jazz. It's really fun stuff! I feel all warm and happy inside, and I want to tap my feet. And there are some moments when I even want to twirl around in a swirly skirt under the moon! Jazz music slides and sways; some bits are very lush and smooth (think fudge or pearls), while others tickle your toes so much you have to stand up and move!

There is a set rhythm, only it never sounds that way because when you play jazz music you smoosh it and pull it and stretch it and squeeze it and shake it, so that it doesn't really sound to have rhythm at all. One of the directors, Mrs. Whouton, said there was a whole new language that jazz people  used when referring to the rhythm. Apparently it consists of "doos" and "dats" and "dits" (there was one more but I forgot it).

Speaking of jazz people, we have a jazz trio, the Jacob Hiser Trio, coming to play a few pieces with us. They are an electric bass (oh so cool! I want one), some drums, and a piano. They sound really neat, and it's fun to see "real" (jazz trio verus classical orchestra attempting to play jazz) jazz played. My seat is the perfect spot for watching the drums and the bass during our 23-measure rests. I found out that the "shushing" noise is made by brushing the drums! The drummer takes two brushes that look like paint brushes with a twisted wire loop at the end, and sweeps them across the drum, smooshing the bristles down really far. And sometimes he turns them over and swipes the wire loop across a cymbal, which makes a smooth, bright noise.

Anywho, we are having our concert in approximately 4 days, and I was never so excited about an orchestra concert before! Which I suppose isn't saying much, considering that I've only had one other. But I definitely am going to have tons of fun.

So I guess the moral of this post is, never ever condemn anything until you've found out what it really is. Not to say that you couldn't condemn Chinese chicken foot soup, but that's beside the point. One never knows what something that appears weird might turn out to be. You might find a new love! (Except chicken foot soup, that's pretty self-explanatory)

What's up Doc?

WOW it's been a long time! I guess my life lately could be best described by a VeggieTales song: "Busy, busy, dreadfully busy, you've no idea what we have to do! Busy, busy, dreadfully busy, much much too busy for you!" School, orchestra, school, job, school, and did I mention school? Here's a condensed picture of my life in the past few months. :)

 My job!! As an earlier post details, to make money I have been playing downtown in front of Dick's 5&10. The first several times I was extremely nervous, and I still am sometimes, but I have grown to love it. It is so rewarding to see the smiles on people's faces when I play a familiar song, and the pay helps too! :-)

For Suzy's birthday we went as a family to see Tangled, in 3D!! I personally had never seen a movie in 3D before, and it was pretty cool. That aside, I have started a mission to have the whole world go see this movie. It's that great. Now, to uphold my image as a bored-by-everything-that-involves-people-under-the-age-of-12 teenager, I wasn't expecting very much. But it totally defied all my expectations; a super cute movie. I wouldn't mind seeing it again! And, as a plus, it had some really great musical numbers--bonus points!! Seriously, go buy a ticket and see it. :-)

November 30th was my very first orchestra concert ever. It also marked the end of my first semester in the Springfield Youth Symphony. We played lots of well-known pieces: Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor, the Polotsvian Dances No. 17, Sleigh Ride, two movements from Beethoven's 5th, and a few "smaller" pieces. Everything went positively swimmingly until the very last movement in the Beethoven, which was the second to last piece on the program. Now in rehearsals I was/am not very good at counting rests, coming in too late usually and having to race to catch up. But during the concert I hadn't missed a single one and was feeling so pleased with myself (uh huh, pride goeth before a fall, surely!). We came to the last page of the last movement-which was super fun to play-everything was getting ready for the big finale, whennnn......wecametotheverylastrestandIplayedone-halfabeattooearly. There. It's out. Although it probably is rather difficult for you to read what I just said, so I'll say it slower. *clears throat* We came to the very last rest right before the Big Note and I played one-half a beat too early. Yep. Major fail. And of course, I played it the way it was supposed to be played: very loud and long, so the end note instead of being one whole note, was a quarter and a whole note. I'm sure I'll laugh about this someday. But, it was a very good learning experience and I will never do it again. End of story. :-)

Above is the only video I could find on Youtube of us; the video quality is rather bad, but the sound is nice. It's an excerpt from Jubilee, conducted by the fantabulous Carla Wooton.

Welll, there ya have it! A lot more has happened in our house, but I'm out of time for today. Guess you'll have to wait with baited breath.....

Book Musings

     This week I got two books out of the library. Well, I got more than two, but these two are the ones I want to talk about. One was The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner, which I have read before, and the other one was The Princess and the Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison. 
     I read The Queen of Attolia first and it was every bit as good as I remembered it. In fact, better. (I love it when that happens!) I put it down with a sense of having gone so deep into the story that it was going to be hard to come back up to real life. Then I read The Princess and the Hound. It started out with some great possibilities, and I was getting rather excited to see where it would end up, but in the middle it started throwing me off. As I got closer and closer to the end, I found myself falling farther and farther out of the story, so when I reached the end I was merely reading words on the page. I wanted to throw it across the room! But I couldn't, because it was a library book and I didn't have any money to pay for it if I ripped it.
     And it got me thinking: how some books can totally draw you into the story and others don't even skim the surface. What makes some books so great and others quite stupid? Part of it is the plot, I suppose. Good books often have great sub-plots as well as main plots to keep my mind active and interested. And the plot has to be relatively believable and consistent in order for me to keep reading. Without a plot, there's no story, right? But I think a lot of it has to do with the details of the author's writing. Really good books, I often find, are the ones where the author has thought about his/her writing. Not just dashing the ideas down on a page, but really sitting back and thinking about the exact words that will best convey the meaning. And mixing up the sentence structures so that the writing does not get stale.
     Most often, what will make or break a good book for me are the details of a writing. Whether the author has taken trouble to really write a story so that it opens up in front of me, or if he's just recording his thoughts on paper.

As Snoopy so aptly put it, "Good writing takes an enormous amount of concentration."

Street-Performing

So, I needed to raise five hundred dollars for Suzuki camp in August. Although babysitting is lots of fun, it wasn't bringing in enough money fast enough. Several fellow violin students had gone downtown to play their violins and made some good money. I will confess it took me six months to get up the courage to try it (For three months the snowy weather was a good excuse, however). Finally, after talking to several people about it, I decided to try playing for just one, tiny hour.
Mom dropped me off at the corner, and I walked up the street to where my friends had told me was the best place. Phew, there was a bench open, so I set my case on it and got out my violin. Better start with something super easy, yet cheerful, I thought. So the clear strains of Minuet 2 floated out into the air. My teacher had told me to smile, so I tried but ended up with some sort of weird lip-stretching. I licked them, and tried again, this time achieving a small grin. The piece ended, and I quickly started Musette. I kept trying to smile, and finally after my fifth piece I could do it without appearing to be an escapee from an insane asylum. I was starting to relax. Several people had smiled back at me. Well, even if I don't make any money, at least I've made people smile today.
Then, wonder of wonders, a man walking up the street dropped three quarters into my case. Bless you! I cried silently. My playing took on new zest as I saw those three quarters. Then a rather tough-looking man came by and dropped a few dollar bills in. "Keep music in your life," he told me, and walked on. Soon people were getting the idea, and dollar bills started filling up my case. I played piece after piece, repeating my favorite ones over, and smiling as wide as I could.
Eventually someone came up to me, and told me I better do something before my money started blowing away. I looked down at my case, and to my surprise, I couldn't see the bottom! Rummaging through the compartments, I found a few cases of old rosin, and I threw those in to weigh the money down. Before enough time had passed to seem an hour, I saw Mom driving down the road. I finished my piece, and packed up. Counting my money in the car, I had made forty-three dollars!
As of today, I am about two hundred dollars closer to my goal. Now all I have to worry about is practicing! God is so good!

"Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name." Psalm 103:1