Something Like Hope

I woke up in a good mood

And I can’t decide if it’s the sun or you.

All I know is that when I look skyward

I feel something like hope.

There are flowers on the hillside

And a sparkle in your brown eyes.

I could spend forever in this landscape

That never gets old.

If the weather is any indication

Of the future situation,

Both the river and my tears

Will soon dry up.

But for now I’m still unsure

Although the breeze is warm and pure,

So if you just hold my hand

That’d be enough.

A Diction Addiction

If my mind was a book, it would be old and leather-bound. The spine would be cracked and the pages worn and yellowed. It would be thicker than War and Peace with smaller print than the Bible. There would be an entire chapter devoted to the lyrics of Brand New, and another for every poem I wrote during my sophomore year of high school. You would find it shelved next to the encyclopedias, across the aisle from biographies of presidents and dead movie stars.

I’m addicted to words. Seriously, I eat them up. I could stay awake for days fueled by nothing but coffee and my love of language. I spend my free time pouring over books and blogs and lyrics. I have notebooks and Word files filled with my favorite lines. I quote Mean Girls and Juno daily and about 95% of my Facebook statuses are lyrics. I repeat Bible verses over and over in my head, and then I’ll write them on notecards and hang them up. I often find that the best way God reveals Himself for me is through short, powerful phrases. I want to work my way through a dictionary and memorize a thesaurus, and when all of those words run out, I want to make more.

                I live for conversations with my best friend over a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. I look forward to the day when I’ll be able to sit on the couch with my husband and just talk about the day. I sit in the dark, letting lyrics fill my head. In the summer, I will walk to the library and stay there until I have finished reading a novel.

                I see grace in margins and love in punctuation. I feel comfort in consonants and energy in vowels. I think there is something beautiful in putting words to emotion. It’s okay to feel something, but I can’t deal with it, can’t fix it, until I can describe it. I want to understand my life in some tangible way. I want to hear it whispered in prayers or see it scribbled in composition notebooks. So if you ever want to get to know me, all you have to do is ask and I’ll open up like a book. And my hope is that someday you’ll let me read you too.

9 Things You Don't Want to Hear During Finals Week

*Submitted by real college students, studying for real finals, and suffering from real sleep deprivation.

1. We’re out of coffee. We have four more days of exams left and you’re telling me we’re out of coffee? How do you expect me to function? Next semester we’re rationing it off to make it last.

2. Your alarm. Didn’t I just get to sleep an hour ago? …5…more…minutes…

3. Stop procrastinating. Excuse me? You have no idea how fried my brain is right now. Add to that the fact that when the temperature went up, my motivation levels went down. So shut up and let me play CityVille.

4. Cumulative. Because testing us on stuff we don’t know just one time isn’t enough.

5. You look tired. It couldn’t be because I’ve been up until 4am for the last 3 nights writing papers and studying for exams, could it?

6. 50% of your grade. In other words, this one test could be the difference between passing and failing the class. No big deal.

7. Late-Night Waybright is cancelled. Noooooo! Where will I go when I want food at midnight?

8. Can I look at your notes? You haven’t been in class all year and you want to benefit from my hard work? Good joke.

9. I don’t believe in extra credit. That’s like your prof saying, “Yeah, I see you flailing your limbs as you drown, but I’m not going to throw you a life preserver.”

Neverland

I wrote this in November/December of my senior year. It's been a constant reminder for me of how much I've grown up.

I walked in with no intentions of ever leaving
Because everyone knows when you grow up you stop believing
I found all the strength I needed in you
I gave my all and you gave yours too
Inevitable, the future is unwinding
Fear takes the place of the hope we've been finding
Could we stop this change for just awhile
Escape the ticking crocodile

There's a place where imagination unfolds
Where Peter Pan never has to grow old
There's a place where time stands still
Lost boys refuse to be men so they never will
Let's pretend it's not all in my mind
Pack up and leave this town behind
Run away and meet me there tonight
Second star to the right

We're just kids forced to grow up too soon
Too big of an imagination for these tiny rooms
Wendy felt it, now I'm feeling it too
But I'm finding all the strenght I need in you
Everything's spinning as we're trying to stand
With our hearts still anchored in Neverland
Could we stop this change for just awhile
Escape the ticking crocodile

There's a place where imagination unfolds
Where Peter Pan never has to grow old
There's a place where time stands still
Lost boys refuse to be men so they never will
Let's pretend it's not all in my mind
Pack up and leave this town behind
Run away and meet me there tonight
Second star to the right

Well let's see them try
Try to take our wings and tell us not to fly
It's hard walking blindly into a future we can't trust
Sometimes everyone needs a little pixie dust

There's a place where imagination unfolds
Where Peter Pan never has to grow old
There's a place where time stands still
Lost boys refuse to be men so they never will
Let's pretend it's not all in my mind
There's a place where imagination unfolds
Where Peter Pan never has to grow old
There's a place where time stands still
Lost boys refuse to be men so they never will
Let's pretend it's not all in my mind
Pack up and leave this town behind
Run away and meet me there tonight
Second star to the right

I'll walk through these doors one last time
But I'll keep a piece of Neverland inside

Taylor

“If I die young, bury me in satin, lay me down on a bed of roses, sink me in the river at dawn, send me away with the words of a love song.”

-The Band Perry

It’s been a little over three months, so I figure it’s about time I tell the story of Taylor Lackey and what she meant to me.

I used to babysit Taylor. She was 9, I was 13. We didn’t talk a lot; at that point in our lives, we were both a bit shy. I don’t know if she was only shy around me or if it was something she eventually grew out of, but that’s how things were at the time. I remember the nickname Tater Tot and sometimes I wonder if anyone else ever called her that. I remember playing Neopets and Bratz dolls and watching Degrassi and Ed, Edd, and Eddy. I remember sometimes Tay would start feeling sick and she’d ask for her mom, and I remember feeling frustrated because I didn’t know how to comfort her. Her Facebook page says that her mom meant the world to her, so I imagine that even when she got older Taylor still looked to her mother for comfort.

                I’ve learned a lot about who Taylor was as a fourteen year old from her Facebook page –from the pictures, her info page, and her friends’ posts. I found out that Taylor loved to write and was passionate about music. I learned that she hated conflict and believed in peace and God. She loved to have a good time and knew how to make people laugh. I learned that she had big plans for her future. She wanted to do well in high school, get into college, and become a journalist. Despite those plans, she worried about the future and how she would turn out.

                I remember when Taylor died. It’s hard to forget when it plays over and over in my head like a bad movie. I was at home in Waupun, it was two days after Christmas, it was around noon, and I was watching YouTube videos in bed. My mom had gone on a call as an EMT earlier that morning and when I saw that she was calling me I assumed she was going to ask me to meet her for lunch. Instead, she sounded as though she had been crying. She started off by saying that she had something to tell me that she didn’t want me to find out from anyone else. She asked if I remembered Taylor Lackey and suddenly I became choked up. Mom explained that Taylor had been in a car accident that morning and that she had passed away. The tears were instant. We wrapped up the conversation and I shut myself in the bathroom for a couple minutes so that I could cry alone. For the rest of the afternoon I sat in bed watching the news spread across Facebook, staring at Tay’s page in utter disbelief. The next two days I spent a lot of time in bed.

                Those two days in bed I tried to remember everything I could about Taylor and I attempted to understand why her death in particular was hitting me so hard. My freshman year of high school a senior, Mike Smits, died. I cried a little bit when I found out just because I felt like I never got a chance to know him, but it was pretty easy for me to get past that. With Taylor it wasn’t so easy. I felt like those nights I spent babysitting her gave us some sort of connection. I felt like I was losing someone I thought I knew, only to find out that I didn’t really know her and now it was too late.

                By the end of those two days, I was exhausted. In the four months leading up to that tragic December morning, I had been struggling with depression. My first semester of college had shaken up my life. I felt confused, lonely, stressed, and altogether unhappy. But Tay’s death changed all of that. I read a C.S. Lewis quote once that said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God was shouting to me in my pain. It was like someone was screaming, “Look at Taylor. She was living life and now she can’t. You’re the one who’s still alive and you’ve been walking around feeling sorry for yourself. Knock it off. Go out and live.”  After that I told myself that I would start living. Every day since then I wake up and make a conscious decision to appreciate all that I am and all that I’ve been given. I’ve relearned how to love life because that’s what Taylor did. Although I’m sure a lot of people still question why God took such a beautiful girl so young, I know that there’s a purpose in it. I’ve seen it.