You Are

Dear Grandma,

You are missed.

It doesn't feel that long ago since we were all laughing with you over something silly that one of us, your grandchildren, had done, just the day before, or enjoying a cup of coffee with the doughnuts you had brought out for us every Thursday; dubbed "Grandma's day".

I don't think we ever cancelled one of those days. 

I am so glad.

The memories of coming in to your apartment with Grandpa and having a pizza party, or watching the Parade and then later that night, the fireworks, on the 4th of July. 

You even came on a vacation with us all: it was life changing for everyone.

Behind your deep blue eyes lay bundles of knowledge and wisdom that you bestowed upon us with love and energy: You always supported our latest passions in a craft or collection; always encouraged us to do what we loved.

You loved your family with all your heart, and it was plain to be seen. 

Your favorite color was purple: your favorite shade was lavender. 

You almost always wore a sweet T-shirt: and sometimes during the summer, you would wear a cotton button-up shirt. For church on Sunday, you would always dress up in a deep lavender short-sleeved shirt with purple slacks, and sandals during the summer, with just a touch of make-up. 

You loved to sit-back and watch everyone go about their business; it was very entertaining to you. 

I remember one Christmas, when you spent the night, we were washing some clothes for you. When we took them out of the dryer, there were streaks of a reddish-pink all over the inside of the dryer. You had left your lipstick in your pants pocket. (: Mom just did that today. 
You always loved hearing me sing; or the whole family. 

The last year you were with us for Christmas, I asked you, "So Grandma, what would you like for Christmas?" 

With a smile on your face, you replied, "I would like to hear all of your family sing together. That is my wish." 

I never had the chance to give you your wish. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I cannot even begin to tell you what a legacy you have passed on to us all. 


You ARE remembered. 


I miss you. 




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgUL3ut4gyQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm6bo_YjEoU


           

                                                                                                                                                                       

Moving life

Ello! 
It has been over a month since I last wrote...much too long.      I know know, no excuses: 

but I have been crazy busy.      


What have I been doing? Haaaa.....where do I start?


*Christmas* 
Shopping, shopping, and then more shopping. 
Wrapping presents and preparing packages for family that lives out-of-state....I feel like I have been up to my ears in wrapping paper for the past couple of days. 

There was that moment of thinking that I was all done shopping, and then I would realize I had forgotten someone. Gotta love that moment, right?


*Band*
Two of my best friends and I have started a rock band. Nothing huge, but it's a start and we love it. No, we haven't played a 3-hour long concert on some fancy stage, but ey: You gotta start somewhere, right? 
We have started at....nursing homes, playing Christmas music for the elderly (I feel the need to add that we aren't using amps with over-drive and there isn't a drumset). Not a big deal, but a chance for us to play as a band, and that is important.   

*Family*
With Christmas comes family....and I have my sister, brother-in-law, and my niece coming out from Iowa to stay for a few days: then I have my sister from Colorado coming to stay for a week. I'm pretty excited. :) 
Adding a note to that, this will be our first Christmas celebrated with a whole, healthy family. It has been stressful, but since when has Christmas *not* been a bit stressful?

                                             


















*School*
I hate talking about school. We are on Christmas break. There ya have it.


*My music*

My Electric: A zebra-striped Cresent

In between the shopping, wrapping, and hanging out with friends and family, I have totally been enjoying "bonding" time with my electric and acoustic guitars, and I've been doing a leetle bit of song-writing. When I have time and money, I am hoping to take up playing bass for the band.      

                               

And that is how my life is moving right now. How is your's moving? 

I will get back into blogging more regularly once I get the time to. 

Written with love by 

~Emmi~

Why don't you be the writer, and decide the words I say....

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The time for NaNoWriMo has come around again. I participated last year. It was a very memorable experience; from being on a sugar-high, trying to keep myself awake late into the night to reach my word-count goal, calling up my writing pal to let her know that my whole first chapter was somehow deleted and I had to start over, or calling my best friend with a panic attack, fearing for the life of one of the characters in my book, listening to her as she reminded that I was the author and I got to decide whether or not they lived; and the final joy of finishing the 50,000 word novel that was all written by me. Yes, it was definitely an AMAZING experience, and I think every person that aspires/wants to be a writer should try it, at least once.  


I am currently working on editing my NaNoWriMo                                                            
Novel, which, I have to be honest, is a bit of a chore for me. I talk a lot about reading, but I'm not a big book reader. I'm one of those people that has to be in a "mood" to read a book. And very rarely does that happen. I am also my worst critic, and a bit of a perfectionist. This causes for up to 15 minutes' work on just one sentence, causing me to hate reading my own writing all the more. 

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I probably get the love of writing from my mother. She has always been into writing poems and journaling about her Bible time. Even when it comes down to writing a recipe on a card for a friend, she throughly enjoys it. It's not really worth asking where I got my love/hate relationship for reading from. Most of my family are avid readers, and for all I know, none of them share the same feelings for it as I do. But I have always loved writing. I don't remember exactly what age it started at. I think it was when I was finally old enough to figure out how to type something up on our old, huge computer. I think it started out just as simple as re-typing out of a children's story book, and playing "post office" with my younger siblings and writing pretend letters to Jane or Joe or Amanda, whomever the other was pretending to be at the time. Pen-pals were a must as well.

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*Taking a deep breath*

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All of this to say that as I was cleaning out all the junk from under my bed, I discovered grocery bags, shoeboxes, and stacks of random school tablets, some of them completely filled, some of them with only a few pages filled, full of stories, poems, and fun sentences that had never been fully finished. I mean, come on, The Ray Story, a story about a cowboy-sherrif in the 1800's that helps "clean up" the the town he just moved to, while spreading the Gospel of Christ; 

Me, working on "The Ray Story" in a hotel on vacation
in Colorado Springs in 2009

Stanley, the Little Blue Bird, an intended Christian Children's story series about a little blue bird named Stanley (Hence the title), with his little sister Cindy, and unknown friends (Unknown, because I never did get far enough into that series to give poor Stanley any friends. Poor bird, just stuck in the book with his sister and mother), having adventures and solving mysteries in their forrest. Then, my very first piece of work, The Missing Box (I know, I know, I was so creative with the title), a story using my childhood friends in the story, revealing an exciting tale (Well, it was exciting at the age of 9 or 10, anyways) of good friends on a hunt for "The Missing Box", holding their friendship treasures and supposedly secret paper. That is also an unfinished story. :(


There are so many more stories that I know are tucked away somewhere under my bed or in a trunk; so many more in a folder on my laptop, and a few others yet that were lost many years ago when our computer crashed. And yet, I haven't stopped writing. There are so many poems, so many songs, so many children's series' that have yet to be written. I thought that it was ironic, funny, and yet appropriate, that I find all of these stories and musings that I had written over the years, on the first day of National Novel Writing Month. And so, I share this originally-going-to-be-a-short-story with you, fellow writers and readers, because I thought that it was just too good to keep to myself.  


Why don't you be the artist, 
and make me out of clay,
Why don't you be the writer,
and decide the words I say,
'Cause I'd rather pretend, 
I'll still be there at the end,
Only it's too hard to ask,
Won't you try to help me. 
~Ellie Goulding~


~Written with love 
                by Emmi~
                     

Heros and Ghosts

If I walk down this hallway tonight it's too quiet

So I pad through the dark and call you on the phone

Push your old numbers and let your house ring          

'Til I wake your ghost

Let him walk down your hallway

It's not this quiet

Slide down your receiver, sprint across the wire

Follow my number and slide into my hand

It's the blaze across your nighgown

It's the phone's ring

I think last night, you were driving circles around me

I think last night, you were driving circles around me

I can't drink this coffee til I put you in my closet

Let him shoot me down and let him call me off

Take it from his whisper, you're not that tough

I think last night, you were driving circles around me

I think last night, you were driving circle around me.

• From "Your Ghost"-Greg Laswell

           

                       

                           I sat in the dark tonight and listened to that song.

                      I wondered, "What ghosts do I awake?" 

                                                      I wonder.....

                     I wonder, how many ghosts of my past revisit me? 

                                                      Do I welcome them back? 

                    Were they meant to return? 

                                                      Should I have let them return to me?

                    How long will they haunt me? How long?............        

Fear.

Do I entertain it? 

Does it entertain me?

How often do I allow it to envelope my entire being?

Have I let it eat away at my soul all this time?

I know I am not the only one that feels that way. Male or female, young or old, dead or living, hoping or hating, awake or sleeping; truth is, we have all felt it. 

I have felt fear

I can't decide if fear can be turned into something beautiful or not. 

You can turn almost any bad situation into something beautiful later on,

but I can't think of a fearful situation that I can remember as having been turned into something beautiful, at any point in time.

Maybe it was the fear of being who I am that was turned into something beautiful 

"I am proud of you for being who you really are, Emily." 

It wasn't until I heard those words from my sister that I realized that becoming who I truly am is a long, hard, and lonely road. 

There are no two people in this road that are exactly alike

That's why it's a lonely road. 

But, the end result is always worth it.

There are moments when I question myself,

Will I allow myself to be who I really am?

Will I dig up the old ghost of myself and return to my old ways?

Maybe the thing I fear the most is the fear of being who I really am.

Can I handle the negative comebacks from people on the simple changes I personally make, to become a better me? 

Will I be responsible for the mistakes I make?

Will I withstand the judgement I receive from others, for being someone that they just don't understand?

Do I listen to the voices in my head that are constantly nagging me?

It isn't worth it, Emily. You're not worth it. Who are you to just dream up being individual and unique? You don't deserve to be who you want to be. 

                              YOU AREN'T WORTH IT.

What if the voices are right? 

What if I am the ugly, unworthy, selfish person that I feel like?

"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves;

I looked for him but did not find him.

I will get up now and go about the city, 

through its streets and squares;

I will search for the one my heart loves.

So I looked for him but did not find him.

The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city.

'Have you seen the one my heart loves?'

Scarcely had I passed them 

when I found the one my heart loves."

And then, my hero sweeps in.... 

"My dove in the clefts of the rock,

in the hiding places on the 

mountainside,

show me your face,

let me hear your voice;                                   

for your voice is sweet,

and your face is lovely.

You have stolen my heart, 

my sister, my bride;

you have stolen my heart 

with one glance of your eyes."

(Excerpts from Solomon's Song of Songs)

That is how Jesus feels about me, and I know that no one can change that. 

Embed that in your heart, because you are embedded in His. 

I will no longer be afraid to be who He has called me to be, because I know when my heart wants to give in to my ghosts, my Hero sweeps in and saves me. <3

                                                                                                         

You are more than the ghost of your past, My Love.

Written with love by Emmi

Dedicated to those who are fighting their ghosts.

You can win this battle.

Photography by Emmi

Fall. It's an amazing season. Happy and sad (Sad, because it means summer is long gone), both in one. For me, happy that winter is approaching, which brings out (what little there is) the reader in me. It means sitting in front of the fireplace reading a book about an Alaskan Pilot, cuddled in a purple blanket I made in memory of my loving Grandmother, and drinking a good cup-o-joe. 

Photography by Emmi
Taken in Iowa

It's the white noise on a walk in the snow in the late hours of night. 

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It's that over-sized, fuzzy, warm sweater that you know doesn't complement your figure, but you wear it anyway. 

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It means we are close to the time of the birth of our Savior, celebrating Christmas. 
It's the hectic Christmas shopping and picking gifts for the ones you love.






    

Photography by Emmi
Taken in Iowa
(Biscotti made by my sweet Sister, Maggie)

It's having friends that we don't get to see very often, come out to the farm and create all manner of good food in the kitchen with my family. 


Come on people, how could you NOT like winter?
(If you say it's too cold, just go get yourself an oversized sweater and suck it up.) 


Today is "one of those days"....cold (yay!), what some people would call "gloomy", rainy, and dull, but I find it to be the nice kind of dull. The kind of dull that makes you want to curl up in bed with something hot to drink and a good book and listen to James Blunt, while a cinnamon-smelling candle is lit and filling up the room with a delicious smell. 

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It's one of those afternoons where you would journal poetic things, or the precious secrets of your heart. 

Photography by Emmi

It's one of those afternoons where I sit at the piano and pretend I can play. 










As I write, I look out the window and see the rain, gently falling, pattering against the far window. 
I think I will sit and watch it fall while I listen to Lifehouse.



A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. 
Oscar Wilde 


Written with love by Emmi

"We'll be old ladies in nursing homes, having wheelchair races down the halls."

                            That is how I feel about my best friends.      

They are the ones that help keep me grounded in Christ, 

               they are the ones I call in the middle of the night when I need someone to tell me that it's going to be ok.

   I know that if I need a shoulder to cry on, they'll be there.   

   If anyone breaks their heart, there will be a price to pay. 

        

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down. 
Arnold H. Glasow 

I know that no matter what, they will always have my back whenever I need them the most.

They are my bandmates, my co-adventure seekers, my inspiration; they are the rock to my roll, the heart to my soul, the half to my whole. <3

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same. 
Elbert Hubbard 

I don't think I'll even be able to think my friends enough for all that they have done, and are doing for me. 

But, as small as this is, this is just one of the thank you's that they will here from me. 

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
Charles Caleb Colton

So, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. 

Words cannot describe what you, my friends, mean to me. <3

My friends are my estate.
Emily Dickinson

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Author unknown

There's a path we walk along, known as life,

That puts challenges before us.

There are moments when you feel like you can't walk anymore,      

and you feel like no one's beside you.

But always remember, no matter what,

I'm always there to walk beside you. 

Written with love by Emmi