It has been over a year since the last time I blogged!  It’s almost surreal to look back at this and see how far I’ve come since that time, and that crisis of life.  Here’s a flash update:

From January to May of last year I was extremely busy with work.  I had my part-time job at the mall and I was also working 3 shows at once during that time frame.  I was Stage Managing a homeschool production of Pride and Prejudice, interpreting a community production of The Miracle Worker, and Assistant Directing a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  By the time the middle of May rolled around I was ready for a break!

In early June, I met a guy named Andrew Quillen at an annual Deaf picnic – my Mom actually introduced us!  He’s hearing and from Colorado and it is a VERY long story of how he came to be in Virginia at the time.  Regardless of all of that, the quick version is that we quickly became friends and that friendship eventually progressed into dating over the summer (he was spending the summer about an hour away from me).  It was a really nice summer together.  When he went back home for the school year though, my life became a whirlwind!  I was contemplating grad school (in Colorado…), working, and directing a large scale musical production.

Grad school fell through, but God did open doors for me to move to Colorado.  I quit my job at the mall to focus on preparing to move as well as to dedicate time to the production of Scrooge, which again was a huge accomplishment that I’m extremely proud of and that God really blessed. 

Meanwhile, my relationship with Andrew continued to grow and we both had a very real sense of God being in the center of us.  A lot of things were complicated, but I was so encouraged by our conversations and the way things were working out.  Unknown to me, Andrew started talking to my Dad, and he was looking at rings.

The weekend of Scrooge (early December), Andrew flew out to surprise me.  After we got home from the opening night performance, Andrew (in his own unique way ) got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!  I was totally shocked but managed to say yes and we have a date set for May!

The entire month of December is a vague memory of staring at my ring, reading a lot of books, and packing.  Right after Christmas, Andrew, Mom, and I made the multiple day trip across two time zones to move me to Colorado.

I now live in the same small town as Andrew (which has been VERY nice!) and work for the school district as a Special Ed Assistant.  The wedding plans are coming together and life right now is all about settling in to this new place and preparing for the new life ahead of me.  Hopefully keeping up this blog better will be among those new activities .  Stay tuned…!

As of today, I have read 200 chapters of the Bible since the first of the year. Through a friend’s Facebook, I discovered this unique Bible reading plan that has really changed my outlook on how I read the Bible. For many years I have attempted to read through the Bible in one year by following a traditional reading plan, and almost every time I have failed miserably. One year I did it, when I was around 13, but that was only because my dad bet me $100 that I couldn’t do it (turn anything into a challenge and I’ll find a way to get it done…). And to be perfectly honest, the reason I’ve rarely succeeded is simply that I get bored.

Now I know that all Scripture is inspired by God and useful for a whole lot of things and that that alone makes it cool, but it’s hard to remember that when you’re bogged down in Leviticus with only Deuteronomy and Numbers to look forward to for the next couple of months. Even in the chronological reading lists, which spices things up a bit, there are still sections where I get bogged down, miss a day, can’t catch up, and eventually stop trying (but with every promise to “do it right next year!”). But this plan has been startlingly different. I’ve been excited to read every day, I’m learning so much, and I am making connections between books and chapters that I’ve never noticed before! And because of its design, it will continue indefinitely and yet I will never read the same chapters at the same time ever again. That keeps it fresh and exciting for me, and I anticipate that I will continue to make even more connections between books and chapters when I start overlapping and reading them with others.

This is the way it works. All of the books of the Bible are divided into 10 lists:
THE TEN LISTS:
List 1 (89 days)
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

List 2 (187 days)
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

List 3 (78 days)
Romans, I&II Cor, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, Hebrews

List 4 (65 days)
I&II Thess, I&II Tim, Titus, Philemon, James, I&II Peter, I,II&III John, Jude, Revelation

List 5 (62 days)
Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon

List 6 (150 days)
Psalms

List 7 (31 days)
Proverbs

List 8 (249 days)
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I&II Samuel, I&II Kings, I&II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther

List 9 (250 days)
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

List 10 (28 days)
Acts

Some lists have quite a few books, others have only one. Not all of them are in order (Hebrews, for example, is in a different list than you might think it should be). Then every day you read one chapter from each list, so 10 chapters a day. When you finish a book, you start the next one in the list. When you finish a list, you start it over again. The 10 chapters a day range from all over the Bible though, so even if one is a boring list of names, ages, and dates, the next might be in the middle of a great battle, and then the next might be a powerful prophecy, and then the next might be teachings from Jesus. There is no way to get bored! ANd even though it is 10 chapters, my mind thinks of it as just one at a time, and that’s no big deal!

So, for example, even though I read Acts 1 the same day I read Genesis and Proverbs 1, I will next be reading Acts 1 at the same time as Genesis and Proverbs 29. But the next time I read Proverbs 1, I will be reading it with Genesis 32 and Acts 4. See how it works? It will constantly be changing and I will be constantly reading passages with new passages and learning the BIble in exciting new ways. Nothing is tied to dates, so if I miss a day of reading or can only get 5 chapters in (or if someone wanted to start tomorrow), its no big deal. I can just continue forward in the lists the next day.

Here is where I first read about it, if you want to know more (be sure to click the READ MORE link near the top under the section “Who is Professor Grant Horner?”). If you’re looking for something new to change up your Bible reading habits, I highly recommend this!

Does anyone know what I mean about struggling through traditional Bible reading methods? Does anyone have any tips to share, or other reading system suggestions like this one?

I had wanted to create this blog entry about 2 weeks ago so that you could all the the PROGRESS of the project, but instead life got away from me and now you get to see it all finished.

It’s called my Crisis of Life Afghan.

This is it halfway completed. The entire center was finished, but the border hadn’t been added yet.

Then this is the finished product!

It was crocheted, and each of the little squares were attached as they were being made. Then the border with the 4 larger crocheted squares in each corner were added at the end. I still have to weave in all the ends, but overall this afghan took me 3 weeks. I’m really proud of it!

Here are some other projects I completed near the end of the year. They are both earring holders. I have an overabundance of earrings (I have 3 holes in each ear) and the packages the come in were getting a bit overwhelming. I discovered that jewelry boxes and especially earring holders are a bit more expensive and cumbersome than I was looking for, so I decided to make some of my own.

The first uses black Aida cloth, the kind used in cross-stitching, and a simple wooden hoop around it. You then just push the earring through the cloth and put the backs on the back.

Here it is hanging on my wall in my bathroom:

Then the second is made with that thick plastic material in a simple picture frame with the glass taken off and with a cut out in the cardboard backing so that the earrings can fit through. I just glued the edges of the plastic to the inside of the frame just to make sure it would stay.

And here is a close up:

Then finally, my first completed book of the year. Normally my average is one book every two to three days, but this one took me about 5. It is the third in Jeff Shaara’s WWII trilogy, all of which were phenomenal. If you are into historical fiction, these are some of the best around and I highly recommend them.

The first one is The Rising Tide, the second is The Steel Wave, and this one is No Less Than Victory. They begin with the paratrooper drop before D-Day and end with the German surrender.

I still feel like I have this giant white elephant following me around everywhere that everyone notices but no one wants to mention. I ran into a couple tonight walking into the bookstore that I knew only through Bryan and it was terribly awkward although no one mentioned anything other than usual pleasant greetings. Part of this blog’s purpose is to help me move on, so I’m taking away the elephant’s power by going ahead and mentioning it right off the bat.

On September 19th I got engaged to someone I thought was wonderful and I was happier than I’ve ever been for over two months. Then, suddenly, exactly 2 weeks ago, he broke it off. Growing up he was part of a certain denomination that we both felt doesn’t base the entirety of their doctrines on the Bible. They have very strict rules that have no origin in the Bible, they treat people with complete control and not always Christian values, and if anyone chooses to leave this particular church, they have to be shunned by other members. Now, we don’t know that all of these things are true for the denomination as a whole, but they are true for his particular church. He wanted to leave, and when we got together, he started going to my church and totally loved it. But from the very start he got a lot of pressure from his parents, friends, and the state head of the church for having left. When he broke up with me, it was because he told me he was wrong to not agree with the church’s teachings, he now believes all of it, and that he HAS to be a pastor in that particular church. I told him that I couldn’t be a part of that church because I disagree so strongly with it and I don’t want to be a part of something that goes against the Bible or compromises my faith in any way. When I told him that, he broke up with me.

There are some other possible issues with him that have come out since our breakup that we’ve learned from other people who know/knew him. Either way, it has been a huge struggle for me, although I know I did the right thing. Everyone is telling me that it is better now than after we were married, and I know that to be true, but it doesn’t make the hurt any less pervasive or the shock any less jolting. God is working on my pain though and has given me writing as an outlet that I’ve turned to almost all of my life.

But I’m still female so mood swings are frequent I think prayers should more be for my family and friends that have to put up with me in the coming months.

P.S. I find it humorous that the two spell check words Xanga doesn’t like in this post are the words “blog’s” and “Xanga.” You’d think they’d include those in their own dictionary.

I’ve had a blog (well, let’s be honest, many blogs) before, but for one reason or another each had to be disbanded or were simply neglected. I’m starting again now, and we’ll see how far I go with it. But first I wanted to explain my blog’s name and the profile picture.

Concetto Spaziale – Attesa literally means “Spatial Concept – Expectation.” It comes from the abstract artist Lucio Fontana. He made cuts in his painting to bear witness to the potential limitlessness of the surface by opening up the space beyond it. I’ve been fascinated by his work ever since I started using abstract, modern, and post-modern art as a starting place for unique writing assignments. I’m constantly drawn back to his idea of cutting things up to release even more potential. This blog is to be a cut into the fabric of my life, to destroy the boundaries of written word or confined expression, to open up the space beyond, and to release even more of my potential.

Hi everyone! I’m just getting started on Xanga… Drop me a comment if you’ve got some ideas on what to do first – or just to say, “Hi!”