One more day of school left. I'm actually having to study today, which is making the day go a lot faster but I wouldn't call it fun. I have a lot of cleaning, packing, studying, and hanging out to do in the next couple of days. I know it's going to be madness, and I know it's going to go very quickly. And with that, I must go pick up my drycleaning.

So here I am, the Sunday of finals week with nothing to study. Everyone else is locked up in their rooms trying to cram as much info into their heads as possible, but I'm rather bored. Why, do you ask? Well, I already took one final next week, and my other two finals which will actually require studying are both on Thursday. Thursday is a thousand years from now, so why in the world would I be studying now? Actually that's a lie, I've reviewed notes for one of them, entirely out of boredom. How sad is that? I've gotten so bored that I actually HAVE started to study, while everyone else here is dying for a study break. Weird.

Speaking of weird, it's weird I won't be here a week from now. Or the week after that. Or the week after that. I will never live in this room again. I'll live on this campus again, but never in this room, never in this building. And I'm not going to see all my friends here for four months. There's some good and bad to that. It's bad for obvious reasons, but it's good because I get to see all my friends from home. It'll be cool to have a break from this and go home to my "other" life.

But before all that, I have to ride around on a bus and sing and play guitar and get way too little sleep with 85 other girls. I really hope I don't go insane. I know choir tour will be great, but I think after two weeks I'll be really ready for it to be over. I'm excited to deepen relationships with the girls though. Bus rides provide a lot of talking time.

A voice says, "Cry out."
And I said, "What shall I cry?"
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the
flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God stands forever."
Isaiah 40:6-8

Goodbye Grampies

Well, I'm back at school. I've been here about 20 hours, and I'm just starting to get used to the fact that I'm here. My roommate came back earlier this afternoon, and things are starting to feel normal again. This morning I was in a daze. That's probably due to the fact that I got to sleep in all break, so last night I went to bed relatively late and had to get up at 7 this morning. Hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep tonight.

So I thought today was going to be the day from hell, but honestly, with all my difficult classes out the way I must say it was a pretty easy day. All I have left is listening to some speeches, getting out of class early, and filling out evaluations for ten minutes in another class. Of course I have some homework to do, not to mention a German song that I have to memorize. But really it's not much. No papers, no tests to study for (well, until finals), and no massive assignments. I think the week is going to go fast. At least I hope so. Then I'll have finals, then I'm outta here.

Who knew that Plumb put out a new CD? Not I, until today when I bought it. Tiffany Arbuckle (Lee) is a genius.

It's been a bittersweet day. A lot of it has been so great. I went to my high school and stayed there for several hours this afternoon. I got to talk with a lot of my teachers and spend time talking to a lot of my peers too. I found out who is and who probably is going to my school next year, and it was great to talk with those people and give them advice and try to convince them that they should go to my school for sure. One girl knows she's going and she's got a spot on the soccer team. She was so excited. She's a great girl, I don't know her that well but it will be really cool to have her around next year. There are three other guys that will probably come as well. I told them all they could come over to my place whenever they wanted and I'd make them dinner. It's so cool that people I know from home will be there next year, because when I came this year there was no one that I knew from home there.

So, it was great to see everyone. But it was also really hard. It's hard to see people and know you're missing out on their lives. It was crazy to spend time with the senior class and remember what it was like when my class was all together. We were so close, and now we're all so far away from each other. I've never really been torn up about it as I wasn't super close to anyone, but it's just crazy what time will do. It's all a part of growing up I guess. And lately I've been really torn about leaving home, learning who you are, becoming and adult, etc.

I got to catch up with my favorite teacher. We went out and talked at Starbucks for an hour and a half after her teacher's meeting. I love this woman. I could always go to her in high school whenever I needed to talk. She's really upbeat and funny, but also so willing to listen and give good, godly advice. I realized today how much I miss her. I was telling her how I miss having that semi-adult figure that I can go to and ask questions to, talk to, and just goof around with. I've been thinking a lot about mentoring relationships the past couple weeks, and today's events put it on my mind again. I had a killer conversation with a senior girl at my school last week. I really want to know what she's going to be doing next year. She's the kind of person I'd love to meet with regularly and have a relationship with, but I don't see how that could happen since she's graduating in two weeks. I just feel like I need that kind of accountability, challenge, and vision from someone who is older than me. I'm establishing a good base of friends at school, but I'm not sure how highly I hold their advice. That's not to say they're all completely immature or something, we're just all peers. We're all experiencing the same things right now, so none of us has the upper hand on anyone. I'd love to spend time with someone who's been there, someone who can help me and give me advice, as well as challenge me.

And I realized this afternoon that I want to be able to do the same thing for people. I want to affect people's lives. I want to invest in someone, be there for them, speak into their life, and be challenged by them in ways they'd never even guess. I want to give myself to people in that way. I want to encourage other people, and hopefully help them out a bit by giving perspective. Looking over the way this teacher has affected me really blew me away this afternoon. My peers let me direct this afternoon in band since our band director wasn't at school today. They were just going to have different students direct the songs, but they let me because...I don't know...they like me or something. Or maybe it's because I'm studying music. Anyway, I'm obviously not an expert, but it was a cool experience. And ya know, it was a position of leadership. I had the floor, and I had the opportunity to challenge, encourage, and interact with those guys. And I loved it.

I hope I never become so self absorbed that I shut myself off from meaningful relationships with other people. We're here for a reason, and I want to get everything I can from the people I know, and in return give everything I've learned and everything I am back to others. Lord grant me the perspective, patience, and energy to do that.

I had the weirdest dream this morning/last night. I was at school and we were hosting a concert (that's happened several times this year) except the concert was at our church. Don't ask me why our school was responsible for it but it was offcampus. Or maybe I just had a connection to work there somehow, I had no idea. But at any rate, I was working the concert. Not as a merch person or security, but as a member of the sound crew. So, there I am sound-checking the Dave Matthews band, making sure things are plugged in right, etc. Then Jars of Clay gets up (since when do they play with Dave Matthews) and start to get all their stuff plugged in. From there we have numerous issues. For whatever reason in my dream we were pluggling a couple of guitars into their own individual boards which were on stage. As if that makes sense. But that's what we were doing. Everything was plugged in right, but it wasn't working. So, they told me to go try my board with a couple other guitars and see if it made a difference. Then I remember leaving and being back at school, and having no way to get back to the concert.

But before I even realized that, I decided to go visit my friend at her school. Now, in actuality my friend's school is over 1,000 miles from mine, two states away. But for whatever reason her school was behind our new dorm building in my dream last night. So I went over to visit her, discovered her room connected 4 ways with her three suitmates' rooms, and some of them were boys. I got confused over all the entrances to the bathroom and accidentally walked into the boy's room during a time that was passed curfew.

After my visit I realized I had to get back to the concert, but I didn't know where it was because I didn't drive there. I finally got a car (maybe I stole one? I have no clue) then hit the road...not really knowing where I'm going. Then, after I'd driven down the street a few minutes I realized I remembered the directions how to go there. Thinking about it now, it was actually the directions to my choir concert a week and a half ago I remembered. So I tried to get on the freeway, but it was dark so I read the sign wrong and got on the freeway going the wrong direction. Within minutes I was surrounded by redwoods. I live in LA county, there are no such things as redwoods. I think the dream ended sometime during the middle of my drive back to the concert, which, by the way, was now going to be Five Iron Frenzy.

Dave Matthews Band, Jars of Clay, and Five Iron Frenzy. Definitely a weird dream.

I'm at home. No more school work, no more sleeping with earplugs. Dinner tonight was glorious, and I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow without waking up to the sounds of construction. Home is great, and I love that I'm going to be here 10 days.

April 7th. I wasn't even out of February yet, and now we're a good chunk into April. I don't get where the time goes. Well, there's not much to say. Things have been quite busy. Spent most of the weekend doing homework and hanging out, it's been fun. Stressful, but fun.

Check out Reckless Abandonment, I think it's going to be a pretty sweet thing. I can't wait to get into it and be challenged and just learn. I need something like this. We all do.

Krystle,

Thank you so much for sharing your story with me. It is such a blessing to hear about God's incredible love and mercy changing a life. I am stoked. I do wish we could have spoken afterward, but maybe next time.

May God continue to use your story as a testimony of His love.

justin

Cool eh? Oh, that's justin mcroberts by the way.