Em's Blog

I  wake up, confused. The light is on. But was I sleeping? Of course I was sleeping, but how can you know if there are no dreams? Or maybe those strange thoughts were dreams, because, now that I think of it, they didn’t make any sense.

Everything is hot.

My head hurts and I wish I could understand life. I wish I could take a shower but I am too weak and too hot. I always fall asleep and every once in a while I will have a nice deep dream. But mostly it is bits and pieces and I get confused and maybe there is no dream after a while and then I wonder if I slept or maybe if I just zoned out in some bizarre manner for a while because I can’t remember.

It was bad before but it’s badder now. I don’t understand allergies and sickness and feeling better or worse. I wish there were numbers and graphs that spelled it out and made sense.

I feel like nothing I am writing makes sense but that is ok because I am in a general state of loopiness and somehow my God will work my future out.

I don’t exactly want to sleep anymore though cause I’ve been sleeping all day and the dreamless sleep is so confusing. But it is night-time. And I’m certain I will sleep anyway whether I want to or not.

I decided to give my blog a makeover. Check it out check it out! Random pictures of things I like.

Last night I dreamed that I was on an airplane that had a big hole in it. The yellow oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and I put my mask on before helping the people beside me, pulled the little tabs to adjust it, and was satisfied knowing that oxygen was flowing even though the little bag didn’t inflate.

I think perhaps I have flown too much recently.

Today was Steven’s gotcha day and we each opened one present. Mom gave Amy and I one pink skirt. So we decided perhaps we would be the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pink Skirt.

Speaking of traveling, I haven’t quite figured out where I’m gonna go for health’s sake but it’s being discussed and worked out. I’ll let you know when we figure something out. I tried staying in my Grandma’s house instead of our house but it didn’t help. Next I’m trying Matt’s place in town.

One bright side to staying at Matt’s is that I’ll be able to edit some SMBI footage! Oh Yeah!

Sometimes it feels like all my friends are frantically trying to sort out their futures and ending up very confused. It’s a very common problem for 19-year-olds to have, which is why I feel a little silly and unoriginal posting about it.

But it’s so there. I am confused and my parents are confused and no one quite knows what to do because I got to Oregon and I felt sick right away.

So Oregon makes me sick…

I have no job in Colorado…

Or anywhere else for that matter…

What am I to do?

It is very confusing and frustrating and if you have any wild ideas about where I should go or what I should do I’d love to hear them

First, a pet peeve.

Let’s pretend that I have a friend named Bob and a friend named Larry and they don’t know each other. Larry has a lot of opinions.

One day, while conversing with Bob, I happen to mention one of Larry’s opinions. I clearly state that this is not necessarily my opinion, it is Larry’s. But Bob disagrees with Larry’s opinion, so he starts arguing with me about it. I feel like I owe it to Larry to try to explain to Bob why Larry has this opinion.

In the end I just argue with Bob, supporting an opinion that I  never claimed. Since its not my opinion I don’t really have a lot of arguments for it cause I haven’t thought about it a huge amount.

It is very frustrating. It seems to happen a lot.

Next, a rant. About Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays.

On one hand, saying Happy Holidays encompasses the whole season, not just one day. Because it’s not just Christmas that’s happening, it’s New Years too, and a break from school. “Happy Holidays” covers the whole she-bang.

On the other hand, Happy Holidays could mean that people don’t want to offend the non-Christians, so they say the generic term that includes all religions. But why is this so terrible?

If the grocery store clerk said “Merry Christmas” to you as you went out the door, having no clue what religion you were affiliated with, it would seem as though she was assuming that you celebrated Christmas whether you were a Christian or not. That Christmas was a holiday for everyone that had little to do with religion.

If, however, she said “Happy Holidays,” she would basically be saying that Christmas was a Christian Holiday.

Long and short, I don’t understand why anyone gets upset when people tell them “Happy Holidays.” Go get upset about world hunger or something, you know?

And lastly, what is really going on in my life. Well, um, I’m home…it’s Christmas season…I feel sick…I hope it will pass…I don’t really want to talk about it….

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!!! (tee hee hee)

It was nothing short of a miracle.

You see, I have had so many dreams in the past couple of years, and they keep having to die. Like goldfish.

It’s written all over in my book and past blog entries, maybe out in the open, perhaps between the lines. I’m getting better! Will my dreams come true? Oh. Sick again. Goodbye beautiful dreams. Again and again, the never-ending cycle.

Bible School was one of those dreams.

It was EBI that I wanted to go to first. But then I began to consider SMBI, and after much prayer and pro-con lists and interviews with SMBI alumni I decided that was the place for me.

Second term 2009 had two classes I wanted to take. It was perfect.

Then, of course, dream-giving-up day came and I gave second term 2009 back to God. Totally and completely gave it up. After that, any discussion of Bible School with anyone had me saying, “Perhaps I’ll go to SMBI the 2010-2011 year.” I didn’t even consider 2009-2010. That dream had died.

One day I sat all alone in my living room. Life was so complicated. I didn’t want to leave Colorado, but I had no job. Where was I to end up?

All of the sudden a wonderful idea for a novel set at a Mennonite Bible School popped into my head. “Man,” I thought, “It’s too bad I won’t be able to go to Bible School for at least another year. But when I do I’m going to write down everything. I’m gonna carry a notebook around with me even if they all think it’s weird.”

Still no job. I packed up my stuff, upset at the unrest I felt about moving back to Oregon. Upset that option A wasn’t working out, I didn’t feel right about option B, and there was no option C.

Let it die, Emily. You have to let Colorado die.

The epic Friday arrived. The Friday I had been dreading. The Friday when my Dad would arrive to help me pack up my stuff and move me back to Oregon. I logged onto Facebook. This is what I saw:

Benji Mast is leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for SMBI

All of the sudden it occurred to me  that second term 2009 was starting in a few days. Not only that, but it would have worked perfectly. I needed an option C, because both Oregon and Colorado were full of closed doors. I was feeling well enough to swing Annie, perhaps I was finally to the place where I could do SMBI. It would have been perfect.

I ranted to my diary about not signing up when I had the chance. And at the end I wrote, “Of course I can’t deny that God Himself led me down a different path. Yet still… And I am satisfied.”

A couple hours later my Dad arrived. When I briefly mentioned how perfect it would have been to go second term 2009 after all he said, “why don’t we call them tomorrow and see if they have any openings?”

Two days later I was at SMBI, notebook in hand.

Back in the sick days there were always dreams and fairytales. Sometimes a train might stop in the middle of the night, and if I climbed aboard it might take me to a party in the woods where I sat on huge white toadstools with many fascinating people. Sometimes I might go to a Bible School and have fun and wear a pink hat. They were wonderful to imagine and never true. If one of those fancies could be true it would be the greatest of miracles.

The greatest of miracles happened to me. But it was even bigger than the wildest of my fantasies. Every moment there was something, or someone. A conversation. A class. A smile. A tear. A cough. I know, because I wrote it all down.

Thursday night we all dressed in fancy clothes and knew that it was over. I was happier than I knew it was possible to be. My mouth hurt from smiling. My feet ached to dance. I wanted to shout to the mountaintops. I wanted to dissolve in tears of joy.

The greatest of miracles just happened to me, and the name of that miracle was SMBI.

My cell phone alarm buzzed at 4:15 in the morning. I was up, dressed, and packed in record time.

Today was the day. The day for everyone in Reading and Study Skills class who had completed their master schedule on time to go spend the day in Washington DC.

We were planning to meet in the public lounge at 4:45 and leave right away, but we didn’t end up leaving until about 5:20, because Laura turned her alarm clock off at went back to sleep. Not that I blame her. No one has been getting enough sleep this past week, what with term papers hanging over our heads, and getting up at 4:15 is just crazy.

What’s even crazier is that we left so early that once we got to DC nothing was open. Yeah. So we ate McDonalds and sat around in Starbucks for a while. The point of the whole “getting up early” thing had to do with getting back early enough for talent night, but then talent night got canceled and we still got up early. Why? No one seems to know. But it added a whole new level of loopiness to the trip.

We crammed all 11 of us into two cars. Our car consisted of… Danial, a 30-year-old guy who likes dogs. . . Holly, my prayer partner who is forevermore getting made fun of for being short . . .Jared, who is apparently good friends with my cousin Conrad. . . Abby, my roommate/bunk-bed-mate who drops things on me in the middle of the night. . . Me . . . Jeff, who I mentioned two posts ago because I needed to get a ride with him but didn’t know his name

The most awesomely random bunch, and I can’t even begin to describe the laughs we had going and coming. We decided we were one big happy family. Jeff reached up front, and said, “here are Daddy, Mommy, and Little Johnny,” tapping Danial, Holly, and Jared in turn. We just about died laughing. We then decided that Abby was Little Betsy, Jeff was Grandpa, and I was Great Aunt Myrtle.

We were pretty squished in there. The other car had the advantage of not having anyone in the front middle seat. Jon and Zack (brothers who are also nephews of Marvin and Dana, who are sort-of my neighbors) were in that car, along with Laura-who-slept-in, Stephen-who-likes-to-dress-Amish, and Linford-who-stayed-up-all-night-to-finish-his-work. I don’t think that car had as much fun as we did, partially because people were mostly sleeping.

It was raining when we got to DC. At first it was kind of nice, walking around in a drizzle from McDonalds to Starbucks and such, but by the time we headed toward the Washington Monument it was getting old. Especially because there is no straight path from the road to the Monument. Instead there is a beautiful winding path with numerous switchbacks that meanders it’s way along. Needless to say I got a bit more wet then I would have liked.

“You know,” said the man who checked our tickets, “If you save these they make a nice souvenir. Take them home and laminate them, don’t use any heat, and they make nice bookmarks. But don’t use any heat! Just use contact paper or something.” We laughed about him the rest of the trip. “Laminate it…but don’t use heat!”

The tour guide was the exact same guy that took my family up when we went to DC last year, and as far as I could tell he said the same things to us. Everything he did, from getting little kids to push the buttons to take us to the top, to telling us to look down the crack between the elevator and the floor when we got out, was precisely like he did last year.

It is useless to try and describe the beautiful city or the amazing things seen at museums. But I got the same feeling I got last year, of just wishing I could meander through it at my own pace for a year and see everything I wanted to see. There is so much there.

After walking around in the rain and cold wet snow visiting museums all afternoon, we headed back to get our cars. Jon and Danial led the way, since none of the rest of us knew where they had parked the cars, so we were exceedingly confused when they led us into a fancy looking hotel. Apparently you had to go through the hotel to get to the elevator to get to the parking garage. I’m not sure why.

All 11 of us crammed into one elevator. It was awesome. When we exited the garage, we all gave a cry of exclamation. “Hey! I recognize this place! This is where we got lost earlier today!” (our gps totally failed) Union Station was our last stop, where we ate lunch/supper.

We parked in the garage and got into the elevator. The doors closed. “Which button do we push?” asked Jon. The doors opened again. Several more people were there, waiting at the other elevator. We asked them if they wanted to come in. They declined because it was too full. There were 11 people in there after all. The doors closed. Then they opened again. We burst out laughing, along with everyone who was waiting for the other elevator. The doors closed again. Then they opened again. We all just about died laughing. Finally, finally we made it down.

There were a gazillion restaurants and a lot of them were giving out free samples. This one Asian lady handed us bits of chicken on toothpicks, demanding that we take them, and yelling “yummy yummy yummy” exceedingly fast. We walked around and came back, and she did the same thing. “You know,” said Jon, “If I was homeless I think I would just come here and walk around in circles till I was full.” But apparently it was a good advertising tactic because most of us ended up getting food from that restaurant.

We all had to squish back into the elevator to go up. Abby nudged/shoved me further in when I wasn’t expecting it, and I went crashing into Stephen. I apologized and laughed at the same time. Stephen cleared his throat. “I believe in segregated seating,” he said.

We all squished back into our cars and began the long drive home, even loopier than before. Conversations that should have been deep were rendered pretty much ridiculous because people *coughJaredcough* said things like, “Well, you see, if there’s no connection, then you don’t connect to them.”

Strange conversations continued until we dropped off to sleep one by one. I just remembered another hilarious thing that happened on the trip. We got out of the car and Holly had this terrible orange-ish brown-ish pink-ish stain on her dress. “What is going on?” said Holly. “Wasn’t me,” said Jared, who had been sitting beside her. “That is so weird,” the rest of us agreed.

We pondered the stain for a while. “Oh, I get it,” said Holly finally, “I had candy in my backpack” Because, of course, the rain had totally soaked through Holly’s backpack, and she held it on her lap while we drove. We laughed and laughed. It was so funny. We unanimously agreed that this was a trip we would never forget.

She keeps expecting that if God gave her this disease, He’ll also give her the grace to handle it, and He doesn’t. She’s angry and feels cheated, while still trying to find a way to make it better and to live her day-to-day life.

She is wrong. That reviewer is wrong. I didn’t get angry at God. I didn’t.

The quote is from a blog that recently gave a review of my book. Reading reviews of my book is like getting an exclusive peek at the rook card I’m holding up to my forehead. A glimpse of how someone else is viewing me. And sometimes I want to run to them, screaming, “No! That’s not me!”

I never got angry. The tears weren’t tears of anger, they were tears of frustration and confusion and hopelessness.

Everyone is trying to understand pain, and how people react to pain. When hard times came, what should have happened?

• I should have gotten an extra dose of God’s grace
• I should have gotten angry at God
• I should have gotten closer to God
• I should have…….

I don’t know what should have happened, but I didn’t get angry at God, and as far as I can tell I didn’t get any magic grace, or get any closer to God than I would have, had I not gotten sick. That last point is a little hard to figure out. But honestly, I don’t think my sickness changed my relationship with God all that much. I was very very close to Him before I got sick. I was very very close to Him during my sickness. I was very very close to him after the sickness was over. There was always growth in the relationship, but it was a steady thing. The sickness didn’t seem to affect it one way or another.

Why didn’t it?

Should it have?

Everyone seems to think that it should have. Because if hard times don’t change your view of God, then what is the point of hard times?

Honestly, I don’t know. But sometimes, if I dig and dig, trying to find the point, I feel like I miss the point, somehow.

Once I wrote, “sometimes I forget what it’s like to not be sick.”

Well now I forget what it’s like to never have had west nile.

Everything I have done this past year is a result. Redmond and Colorado and Annie and even SMBI. You want to know how it happened that I ended up at SMBI? Really?

Before I got sick I never even considered SMBI. I was going to EBI. But then I went to a sleepover and everyone laughed and laughed. I got out my notebook and wrote, “If you see somebody laughing, that’s not me. Cause nothing is the way it used to be.”

The way I saw it, EBI was a laughing school. SMBI was a sit down and study school. So I began to consider SMBI.

Now I know this is ironic considering the number of times I’ve accidentally laughed out loud in the library this term. So I never really stopped laughing, I just began laughing for different reasons.

I know I’ve changed. Me, Emily Smucker. I’ve changed deep inside. I look at life differently. It sounds like a good thing, but it isn’t always. Sometimes it is.

But what would I be if west nile had never touched me? That’s the part I can’t see anymore. I could at the beginning. I saw everything my life would be were it not for west nile, and I wanted it very badly. But the more west nile wrapped it’s tentacles around my life, the more it just became my life, and I couldn’t exactly tell what would have happened otherwise.

When it comes to pain, everyone has a theory. Some theories make sense to me, some don’t. If you have a good theory on why pain happens, feel free to comment.

But I don’t have a theory yet. I can’t figure it out. I can see good that has come out of my sickness, and I can see bad that has come out of it. I can’t see what would have happened had it never happened.

Sometimes it feels like I’m digging and digging to find the point, and because of that, I’m missing the point.

I guess since this is such a short week the entire student population decided to cram as much into it as possible. I’m not just talking about evenings filling up rapidly with videos for BCF class and Reading and Study skills class, or hurriedly trying to finish up my persuasive speech. I’m talking about blog-worthy things happening.

Monday us girls had an ugly dress day, and then in the evening we transformed, dressing in fancy dresses and having a tea party. It was so much fun that we decided Tuesday would be fancy dress day.

Then, today, all the guys decided to have a weird hair day.

Yesterday I had one of those moments that I keep thinking back on and laughing about. It happened during choir practice. There are only five students besides me who are not in choir, so it’s usually pretty dead around. I snagged this moment to do my cleaning job.

So I, wearing a bright pink dress (it was fancy dress day, you will remember) and carrying two tea cups that I intended to take to the kitchen to wash, trotted down the stairs. Then, all of the sudden, bam! There was a boy beside me.

It was John, one of the 5 not in choir, a quiet guy that I don’t talk to much. He apparently was coming up the hall from the library while I was coming down the stairs, so that when the stairs ended we were all of the sudden striding along side by side.

It was so random and awkward that I burst out laughing. “Hi,” I said, in a “this is so random and awkward” voice.

John gave a little swagger. “Hi,” he said, in an “It’s so nice to meet you” voice.

OK….

The hall ended. In front of us were the wide open double doors of the gym, where virtually the entire student body was standing, facing us, practicing choir. Yes, that whole ordeal had happened in front of everyone, as though we were on stage.

I turned to the right to go to the kitchen. He turned to the right to go who knows where. We walked off stage together.

You know what else happened this week? Well, it started last Friday. Aunt Barb left me a voice mail about coming to her place for Thanksgiving, and saying that there were two guys coming that direction who I could maybe catch a ride with. Jerin Bender and Jeff Kanagy.

I knew who Jerin was, but I didn’t know which guy was Jeff. I know that sounds really lame, but I really haven’t put forth a huge effort to get everyone’s names down. Plus I’d been sick for a week.

However, for some reason I didn’t feel terribly comfortable snagging Jerin and asking for a ride. I don’t know why, some people are just more awkward to talk to than others. So I didn’t get that done until Sunday evening, and guess what Jerin said. “Uh, I’m not sure if we’re going past or not. You’ll have to talk to Jeff. I’m riding with him.”

Um, great…

I had been trying all weekend to figure out which guy was Jeff, but now I tried harder. There was one guy who I thought might be Jeff, and he showed up in my Reading and Study skills class. I had never really noticed him before, but lo and behold, we didn’t have a roll call, so that didn’t help me much.

At supper time I snagged Kayla. “You have to sit by me and show me which guy is Jeff,” I said. So we found a seat near the back where we could watch everyone, and figured out who Jeff was. Then I pointed out all the guys that I didn’t know their names, and asked Kayla to tell me what their names were. So now I know.

Well I talked to Jeff and got the ride. I am happy. But would you believe, I have a third story to tell about.

Yesterday Kayla decided to take a shower. She opened the curtain and screamed. There was something dead in there.

It was a fox, skinned and hanging from the shower head.

Dorm 5 was declaring war on dorm 6.

I’m just kidding. About the dorms declaring war, that is. What actually happened was this: The son of the music teacher trapped a fox, killed it, and skined it. Some boys apparently stole it, and some girls volunteered to take it to the girl’s dorm and play the joke.

The school was in an uproar. I was in the corner, writing my Mennonite Bible School novel in my head.

A dead fox in the shower? Seriously?

So many things to write about, so little time. Will you get a new blog post soon? Who can tell?

Today in speech class it was the day to give persuasive speeches. Chris’ turn came. He got up front and said, “…um…”

I burst out laughing because “um” was about the lamest introduction possible. I know that sounds really mean. So I stopped laughing.

“Um,” Chris continued, “the, uh, procrastination, um, um, um, is…bad.”

He stumbled around in this manner, and no one quite knew what to think. Then suddenly he straightened up, made some comment about how “this is what happens when you procrastinate,” and everyone burst out laughing.

Chris tried to continue, but everyone was laughing and he was laughing and things were getting nowhere. Then all of the sudden there was a stick in his hands. Huh?!? Where had that come from?

Oh. He pulled it off the front of the podium. We just about died laughing.

It was terrible. Brian, the teacher, was laughing just as hard or harder than the rest of us.

Chris paced back and forth. He coughed. “Procrastination is bad,” he said, and gave some reasons for it. Someone tittered. We all laughed. Chris laughed. Brian laughed.

Somehow the speech ended. The point of the speech was, “don’t procrastinate.” Because apparently Chris had chosen his speech topic the night before.

Emily’s daily schedule:

6:45ish-10:00ish—Sleep, wake up when people enter or exit the room, sleep some more, eat some breakfast, sleep sleep sleep.

10:00ish-10:45—Wake up suddenly, realizing I have a class soon. Get dressed. Swallow lots of pills. Stumble down to class.

10:45-12:15—Sit in class with head resting against the wall.

12:15-2:00—Stumble back up the stairs and into bed. Eat some lunch. Fall asleep.

2:00-2:30—Wake up. Oh no, I have class soon. Swallow lots of pills. Stumble down to class.

2:30-4:00—Sit in class with head resting against the wall.

4:00-7ish—Stumble back upstairs to bed. Sleep and sleep.

7ish—eat some supper

Rest of evening—Lie in bed feeling miserable, wonder around feeling miserable, study.

Sometimes I want to laugh at myself because of course, of course this was going to happen. Bible School is basically a germ factory and I am basically a sickness magnet so do the math, people. I don’t regret coming here but I’m beginning to think that it’s a good thing it happened so spur of the moment or else I would have realized how stupid of an idea it was and baled out.

Now something more lighthearted:

Last night a girl named Beth said, “Hey, you know know how the guys get the library on Wednesday nights? You know what we should do? We should all get on the top bunks and jump off at the exact same time so it would be like, “BOOM!”

So we did. Well I didn’t. I have a strange fear of leaping off of top bunks. But there were some loud booms and then more loud booms cause some girls in some other room were apparently just jumping up and down over and over again and then it was over and I never heard what the guys thought or even if there were any guys in the library to hear us.

I haven’t been coming down to the library much. Hopefully my schedule kind of explains it. I guess I never came out and said that I’ve been struggling with sickness, but I have. The result? I haven’t been posting like I promised.

Sorry.